Volunteer follows her heart

Tuesday, January 23, 2007
BY MICHELE HOWE
Star-Ledger Staff

Philipa Reist developed a passion for the outdoors and an appreciation for animals and wildlife while growing up on a sheep farm in Bedminster.

"I was delivering lambs with my bare hands when I was 9. I've had an appreciation for the natural world from a very early age," Reist said.

As a volunteer with the New Jersey Conservation Foundation's Far Hills office, not far from where she grew up, the 31-year-old Clinton resident is working on a variety of projects related to that life-long passion.

She volunteers three mornings a week at the foundation, researching liability issues relating to land that is polluted with industrial contaminants, and looking into ways to create tax incentives for farmers who commit to keeping their land in agricultural production for periods up to 20 years.

"These would be new tax reductions, in addition to the use-based, preferential property tax assessments adopted by many states around the 1970s. My findings may inform new incentives for farmers in a pilot agricultural enterprise district, proposed for Gloucester, Salem and Cumberland counties, by the Tri-County Agriculture Retention Partnership," she explained.

The foundation also benefits from Reist's experience as a Web designer. She has made upgrades to the foundation's Web site (www.njconservation.org) and created an e-mail version of the organization's newsletter.

Reist worked as a Web designer in New York for six years, running her own business, and also worked in real estate in New York for more than a year before moving back to New Jersey.

"I thought about continuing to work in real estate here," she said. "But in New Jersey, I'd be selling mostly new homes that use land in ways that are, well, offensive to me. I'd like to continue learning at the foundation about the process of acquiring land for conservation."

She now lives "simply" and works part-time pet sitting and housecleaning, she said.

Since 1960, the New Jersey Conservation Foundation has preserved more than 100,000 acres from the New Jersey Highlands to the Delaware Bayshore, permanently protecting forests, farmland and natural resources. For information on volunteer opportunities or ways to save New Jersey's natural areas and resources, contact the NJCF at 1-888-526-3728 or visit the organization's Web site.

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