Eagle Scout Project Aims to Transform Stewart Woods

Matthew Richards is casual about the work ahead of him, which is anything but easy.

The 14-year-old prospective Eagle Scout, a month away from starting his freshman year at Indian Hills, is taking on an Oakland project that for years has been on the backburner: improvements to the trail at “Stewart Woods,” a piece of wetlands sitting off Ramapo Valley Road near Dogwood Elementary School.

For his Eagle Scout project, Richards plans to direct other members of Boy Scout Troop 49 to complete the upper trail of the woods, which ends near the school but is now broken off by rocks and wetlands.

He also plans a picnic area at the bottom of the trail, right off Ramapo Valley Road, where dying trees will be removed and picnic tables installed for a family-oriented recreation area.

The woods, formerly known as the Raymond property, got its name from Dottie Stewart, an Oakland woman who, before passing away in 2005, had fought to protect the area. The same year, the borough had eyed improvements to the site that largely resemble the work Richards will be undertaking.

Environmental Commission chair Nancy Krause approached the Boy Scout troop last year about making the area a potential Eagle Scout project.

“They’re offering a lot more than I thought,” she says, having expected the scouts to move along in smaller phases. But Richards proposed the entirety of the project to earn his passage as an Eagle Scout, going through not only the multistep process for Boy Scout approvals but also making the case to the borough, and obtaining approval from the council July 10.

“It’s going to be a very labor intensive process,” said Tendai, Richards’ father. “I think there’s an opportunity here to make something the town will cherish.”

Richards will have as many as 30 fellow scouts under his direction for the project, which will include the delicate work of installing French drains and removing rocks and weeds to finish off a path through the woods without disturbing the area’s ecosystem.

“It won’t just be scouts, we’ll have friends and family come too,” Richards adds, modestly, though his father still notes the project is still “quite the undertaking for a 14-year-old.”

One of the main facets of Richards’ project will be to map the trail, providing educational information about the wetlands and the ecosystem in the area for use by science classes in the Oakland school district as well as curious residents.

“There’s always an opportunity to teach with nature,” Krause said. “Every time you walk through the place there’s something new to see.”

Richards, who is young for an Eagle Scout candidate, says he will continue in a leadership role in his troop after he completes the project, and hopes that the legacy of his capstone effort with the scouts will be a place Oakland residents can use long after the project is laid out.

“I hope a lot more people will come and enjoy the area,” Richards said. “There’s not really a place like this in Oakland.”