James M. O’Neill reports for The Record:

When Jack Branagan left Bergen County in 1976 and built a log cabin in an undeveloped, forested area of Sussex County, he soon discovered that a developer planned to raze trees and disturb wetlands right across the street to build a complex of 170 townhouses.

Branagan jumped into action, buying up the 55 acres in Stillwater Township. .”No way was I going to let a developer get his hands on that land,” he said. “It takes people like us to say you don’t have to pave everything.”

Now, four decades later, the property has become one of the first puzzle pieces in The Nature Conservancy’s bid to create a “Bobcat Alley” so the state’s endangered wild cats can roam unimpeded across northwestern New Jersey.