(Photo by Robert Barossi)

by Robert Barossi

In urban and suburban areas, small patches of green space are invaluable and always in need of protection. Often, if not most of the time, it’s volunteers who do the protecting. In Haddon Township, in the middle of the heavily developed Camden County, New Jersey,  the tiny piece of forest known as Saddler’s Woods is maintained and preserved by an all-volunteer organization, the Saddler’s Woods Conservation Association. The work they do is invaluable and goes a long way to ensure that people living in this thickly settled forest of suburbia have “an oasis of beauty and tranquility” to experience and enjoy. At only twenty-five acres large, and just five miles from the city of Philadelphia, it is an important oasis indeed.