Happy to see acres preserved

Accolades to the Mission Society of Salesian Sisters, who have recently sold 205 acres adjoining the Paulinskill Wildlife Management Area in Hampton Township. The purpose of this sale is for the land to be preserved in perpetuity for natural resource protection. The conservation will provide a permanently preserved green buffer along the Paulinskill Valley Trail. As I’m driving along the routes I travel to conduct the necessary errands of life and view the many “For Sale” signs along the beautifully-wooded rolling hills of Sussex County, a little part of my soul dies as I think of commercial development taking the place on these beautiful pieces of land. I can’t help but wonder whether these landowners will be rewarded with the monies the sales of these parcels will bring them, as they live to see our precious county continue in its passage toward resembling Route 46 in Parsippany. I yearn for said landowners to be contemplating the philosophy espoused by John Bogle, Founder of Vanguard, as he confronts values decisions such as those in his recent book “Enough — True Measures of Business, Money and Life”. How sad I find it to observe the emphasis on consumerism as the pinnacle of life’s activities as I observe life around me, where people will get up in the middle of the night in order to acquire more things. And in Sparta Township, where wealthy and educated people may be concentrated, there has been no outcry for the township to agree to follow the Highlands regional master plan. So there is no discernible concern about protecting the water supply which provides water to more than half the state population. Marilyn Chapman Sparta