New Jersey’s Best Kept Secret – Biodiversity

Bill Young

PWS, CERP — Wetland Scientist, Landscape Architect, and Ecological Restoration Leader Bill Young is a nationally recognized wetland ecologist, restoration scientist, and landscape architect with more than 39 years of hands-on experience designing, building, and stewarding resilient coastal and freshwater ecosystems. His career spans more than 65 coastal salt marsh, freshwater wetland, and upland habitat projects across the Mid-Atlantic, Northeast, and Southeast, including some of the most ambitious restoration efforts in Jamaica Bay. A field-first practitioner, Bill is known for his ability to bridge rigorous ecological science with the realities of construction-meeting budgets and schedules. His work ranges from wetland banking and mitigation design to the restoration of Superfund sites, wastewater treatment wetlands, and large-scale coastal resilience projects. He has led endangered species monitoring efforts—including post-Sandy piping plover protection—and is equally at home drafting ecological design frameworks as he is running crews knee-deep in the marsh. Bill’s restoration leadership includes major contributions to the Jamaica Bay ecosystem, notably the Yellow Bar Hassock marsh island restoration and multiple companion projects that have reshaped regional understanding of sediment dynamics, habitat creation, and climate-driven marsh loss. Photo 1. Bill with a baby horseshoe crab born on the restored Yellow Bar hassock, Jamaica Bay. 2013. He is certified as a Professional Wetland Scientist (PWS) by the Society of Wetland Scientists and as a Certified Ecological Restoration Practitioner (CERP) by the Society for Ecological Restoration. Bill is also a licensed Landscape Architect in New York and Florida, with full U.S. Army Corps of Engineers training in Construction Quality Management and 40-hour HAZWOPER certification. For more than 23 years, Bill has served as an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Design, where he teaches Ecology and mentors emerging designers and restoration professionals. He has also taught at City College of New York and Temple University, shaping the next generation of ecological practitioners through a blend of scientific rigor, field intuition, and systems-level thinking.

05 Young FINAL SER-A River Runs through it SER 15 min 3.pptx JAMICA BAY - NY