The Protectors of Pine Oak Woods, a citizen organization committed to the conservation and preservation of remaining natural area on Staten Island has, since the early 1970s, carried on the mission of its predecessor, SIGNAL.

[2] Containing an extensive system of connected trails and covering 2,800 acres (1,100 ha), its forested hills run the length of Staten Island's midsection while wetlands and kettle ponds fill much of the low-lying areas.

Then, as today, the boulder-littered moraines were covered with many species of trees: oak, hickory, maple, beech, as well as lesser quantities of birch, sweet gum, ash, black walnut, wild cherry, and tulip.

Below the canopy of this sub-climax forest grew dogwood, ironwood, spicebush, blackberry, wild grape, Virginia creeper, and sassafras, along with royal and cinnamon ferns, skunk cabbage, lady slipper, and trout lilies in the wetter areas.

Its forested hills, strategically located between and above the Raritan Bay and the New York Harbor, offered timber for ship building, iron ore for the production of cannonballs, and a staging ground for British troops during the War for Independence.

Henry David Thoreau - in his furthest journey from his native Massachusetts – came for one year in 1843 in order to tutor the nephews of his friend and fellow transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson.

This original route of the proposed "Richmond Parkway" would have bisected the swath of land on whose behalf Olmsted had pleaded including what is today Fresh Kills, William T. Davis Wildlife Refuge, Reed's Basket Willow Swamp, Willowbrook and High Rock Park.

[3] Conservation activists, given immediacy by the Federal Highway Act and hope in the person of President John F. Kennedy's Secretary of the Interior, Stewart Udall, mobilized in opposition to these plans.

At the helm of the SICPC, an all-volunteer organization, were several "off-islanders" – young professionals who had moved to Staten Island's North Shore area in the 1950s largely because of the quality of life promised by the open space that still existed.

In addition to Bradford Greene, there were Terrence Benbow and Frank Duffy, both attorneys practicing in Manhattan; Robert Hagenhofer, a graphic designer; George Pratt, director of the Staten Island Institute of Arts & Sciences; and New York Times staff writer Alan Oser.

One year into the SICPC's legal fight against the original route of the Richmond Parkway, the Staten Island Greenbelt Natural Areas League (SIGNAL), spearheaded by another resident-journalist, John G. Mitchell, formed as a vehicle for rallying community opposition to the highway construction.

Two years later, when Robert Moses proposed the construction of a sunken boulevard which would have sped traffic through the middle of the famed Washington Square Park, the Joint Committee to Stop the Lower Manhattan Expressway led by Jane Jacobs, defeated him again.

Long before GIS technology was available, McHarg used data rich maps and overlays which allowed planners to visually understand how social values – historic, residential, economic, recreational, scenic, ecological factors – synergistically interacted with and potentially impacted upon human activity, including road building.

"[3] Under duress from developers who were eager to begin building homes adjacent to the roadway, the Greenbelt's erstwhile supporters, Mayor John Lindsay and Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, publicly backed a compromise route.

[5] When the work was halted by the city, excavations were used to construct what was known as "Moses Mountain" and now "Paulo's Peak,"[6] a 200-foot rise and viewpoint adjacent to the Manor Road - Rockland Avenue interchange.