elm, and crab apple. New Jersey's Green Acres program has targeted the Paulins Kill and its surrounding valley as an excellent natural resources for open space and farmland preservation and recreational opportunities. The state, working together with agricultural development boards in Sussex and Warren Counties, and with the Ridge and Valley Conservancy, a local nonprofit land trust, share land acquisition costs to enter tracts of real estate into the program. Since 1983, several farms across New Jersey have sold development rights to the county programs. Sussex County has permanently preserved of woodland and farmland. Likewise, Warren County has preserved 100 farm properties, comprising over . In addition, four Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) are in the Paulins Kill valley area: Bear Swamp WMA, Trout Brook WMA, White Lake WMA, and Columbia Lake WMA. Together they comprise 6,564 acres (2656 ha) of protected lands, mostly acquired through "Green Acres" funds. Hunting and trapping are permitted in season in many of these protected areas. Common game animals include white-tailed deer, eastern coyote, red fox, gray fox, opossum, eastern cottontail rabbit, raccoon, gray and red squirrel, beaver, muskrat, and woodchuck or groundhog. Common game birds include ring-necked pheasant, eastern wild turkey, American crow, and Canada goose. The Paulins Kill watershed is home to a variety of other animals. Other mammals include eastern chipmunk, porcupine, black bear, striped skunk, river otter, and bobcat. Common northeastern American reptiles found there include snakes such as the American copperhead, northern water snake, common garter snake and milk snake, and turtles, including the eastern box turtle, and common snapping turtle. Hiking The Paulinskill Valley Trail—a network of rail trails along abandoned railroad beds of the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railroad—have been transformed and maintained for hiking, horseback riding, and other recreational uses, stretches for from Sparta Junction in Sussex County to Columbia in Warren County, roughly following the entire length of the river. After the New York, Susquehanna and Western decommissioned the route in 1962, the right-of-way along this corridor was purchased by the City of Newark the following year. Newark hoped to use the bed for a water pipeline connecting to the proposed dam and reservoir project on the Delaware River. However, this project—controversial from the start because of environmental concerns and the federal government's abuse of eminent domain—was canceled during the 1970s. Newark sold their claim to the corridor in 1992 to the New Jersey Department