About Us: “Community-Focused Conservation”

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Habitat Recovery Project, began as a reforestation/conservation effort based in the foothills of the Pocono Mountains just minutes from the Delaware River, home to fracking contamination, coal mining, and aggressive agricultural deforestation, we had first made it our mission to do our part by cleaning and restoring an abandoned junkyard and planting a small forest in its place to regenerate and preserve wild habitat through phytoremediation. We have since expanded a replicable culture and program that we use to create and inspire community-based land restoration projects across the United States and beyond. This journey has taken us to wildfire ravaged lands and abandoned gold mines in the Sierra Mountains, to gold mines and deforested areas in Kenya. Fate has brought us to Southwest Louisiana, where focus on environmental justice initiatives in the many industrialized coastal communities here.

Goals

Our goal is to set nature back on it’s correct course through habitat restoration, cultural preservation, and education. We use organic and natural remediation techniques, while empowering and centering environmental justice ethos. We aim to empower both individuals and our greater community to take action against the destruction our planet, by making sure their needs are met and exceeded in a sustainable way.

Here’s our “Big Four”, but please be sure to check out our wider scope of objectives on our Impact Page.

History

As told by co-founder, Ocean Clark

We didn’t choose this path, it chose us.

In 2016, my twin brother, River, found this property available online. It was listed at about 6% of its value based on nearby property. He came to me so excited about the opportunity, but he was short on funds. I couldn’t help but loan him the money to buy this dream of his. He won the bid and we arrived to tour the new land in the middle of the coldest part of the year. It seemed like a winter paradise…

Snow drifts swept across endless rolling hills down to an enchanted overgrown forest as a winding icy stream coursed through. During that first visit I decided I wanted to build a home here. We cleared his loan in trade for a big slice of the land. Before I even returned home that weekend I put in notice on my apartment and just a couple weeks later moved into a tent on this raw land with plans of building a homestead. However, when the snow melted the truth about the land began to reveal itself amongst the fields of spring flowers..

the great reveal

As Spring approached and the deep snow drifts began to melt, so did my heart. I had dreamt all winter of nature at its best: Billowing fields filled with rainbows of flowers, fertile soil to grow food for my loved ones, fern gully crawling with life. Nevertheless, that dream quickly became a nightmare. Nature’s kryptonite made itself apparent…The land had been used as a dump. How could our sanctuary be a junkyard?!

A quarter-mile long tire pile trailed along one of the hills. Dozens of rusted vehicles littered the landscape. Gas cans, broken glass, and nails were within every footstep. Ruins of what we would find out were old factory farm chicken coop facilities laid dilapidated across the horizon. But the worst part was the lovely little five acre forest and stream were littered with tires and garbage too. Instead of working on our home, I hired a few friends and we spent the first building season just cleaning up those woods. Now the little forest is once again pristine. I fell in love with the land and became determined to keep working until every inch was cleaned up even if it took the rest of my life.

As we started making friends with neighbors, we learned the dark history here.

A Native Chief who lives down the road confirmed our land was once a sacred burial ground many hundreds of years ago. Next, a local pig farmer told us tales of his time spent working here as a child on a commercial chicken farm, back in the 1950’s. This was one of the biggest of the era, the kind you see in documentaries. Campbell’s Soups purchased most of their chickens from our property at that time.

After the commercial farm operation closed, sometime in the 1970’s, a man moved into what used to be the offices for the farm. His stay here until the end of his life.

Then this land sat abandoned for a few decades. Local legends about the history here kept people away. Over the years the weeds took over and buildings burnt down. Bob cats, deer, porcupines, and many other creatures moved in. The field became overgrown with tall grasses - several feet taller than all the neighbor’s due to the massive amounts of fertile chicken-dropping soil. Eventually, the family members who inherited it stopped paying taxes and it went up for auction by the township online.

That’s where we came in.

Jumping back into our predicament, we bought an old 1978 dump truck and in the first season alone hauled over forty loads to the scrap metal yard and city dump. We had taken giant strides in the right direction. We built a house made of recycled shipping containers, and made giant art projects out of the 100,000 tires dumped on our land. These tires alone would cost nearly a quarter million dollars to dispose of properly so finding alternate options with them is our only hope of cleaning up the land.

It was around this time that my partner, Alyssa, entered my life and we quickly fell head over heels. Her love for me not deterred by the fact I invested my life savings into ruins of an old junkyard, she joined the effort to make my nightmare into a ‘dream come true’. With a background spanning the vastness of environmentalism - renewable energy, conservation & land use policy, wildlife rehabilitation, and more - she brought promising hope, vision, and knowledge to the table to overcome this seemingly impossible undertaking.

My plan was just to clean up the land but Alyssa came on board and spearheaded our greatest endeavor yet, planting a whole new forest on the land that we have managed to clear. We are using phytoremediation techniques, aiding our manual effort to clean up the land by planting thousands of trees, so nature can be set back on its course and do what nature does best.

We had built a low-impact sustainable life there in a hybrid shipping container tiny home. Then in the beginning of 2020, moved out to California to expand our operation, where we now operate from a 300+ acre historic homestead in the Sierra Mountain foothills. We are growing a lot of our food in a greenhouse hydroponic garden. Co-Founder, Alyssa, has also brought her animal rehabilitation to the land. We have chickens to help with tick control and composting.

Although unexpected, this opportunity that fell into our laps is a blessing. We are so happy that fate has chosen us to facilitate this restoration. We have ambition, we have a plan, and we have our hearts in this.

Now, we are graciously asking for your help.

We have made this effort for three years solely out of our pocket and created a movement with projects across several continents that we can no longer support on our own, and are asking for assistance. Reforestation and clean-up is so important in this time of immense amounts of forest clearing, pollution, and ecological crisis. With your support, we can do this better and bigger. We are trying to do our part, and whether you are a corporation or individual looking to offset your footprint, you can too.

My father has single-handedly planted over 250,000 trees over his lifetime. We have exceeded spreading that amount of seeds in our first two years.

We have opened our hearts in hopes that you can lend a hand and help us make this difference.

Learn more about our strategies, ethos, and where your donation is going on our Impact Page.