At $2.7 million, the Interboro portion of the Forked River Mountain Preserve may be one of the most expensive puzzle pieces ever.

To the people of the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, who have fought for nearly 15 years to add the 614 acres worth of property to other protected areas of the preserve, it's well worth the price and wait. The 13 parcels of land are being purchased from Interboro Holding Co., a land investment firm based in Hackensack.

The two 180-foot peaks that make up the highest points in Ocean County give the preserve its name. They may not be anywhere near the height of Everest, Fuji or McKinley, but the peaks and the surrounding area summon enormous feelings of passion and pride for Pine Barren conservationists.

"Surprisingly, for all this area, this 20,000-acre piece of forest is the largest piece of forest (in the Pinelands National Reserve) that's not broken up," said Chris Jage, an assistant director for the Conservation Foundation.

With help from the state and Ocean County, nearly 4,000 acres of the Mountain Preserve have been set aside for protection and maintenance.

It's been no easy task. Several different developers purchased different tracts of land throughout the preserve. Slowly but surely, the state's Department of Environmental Protection, the Ocean County Natural Lands Trust and the Conservation Foundation have been buying up land.

The fate of the area could have been very different. The two peaks could have been developed into a city on a hill for easy access to a proposed airfield near Warren Grove. When Pulitzer Prize-winning author John McPhee wrote his book, "The Pine Barrens," in 1968, efforts to save the natural landscape began to take shape.

Jage compares the influence of McPhee's book with that of Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring," which relates the use of pesticide to its effects on wildlife in the United States. The book, published in 1962, led to the ban of the chemical DDT as a pesticide a decade later.

"They weren't just good reads," Jage said. "They changed the course of history."

The significance of the area is both ecological and cultural. Special plant species range in size from the Atlantic white cedar, which has competed for space with the pine tree for centuries, down to the pitcher plant, a carnivorous plant that extracts nitrogen by trapping insects in its cavities.

Despite the lack of development, the Mountain Reserve has always been a place of gathering. All that remains of Albert Place are a few bricks indicating where a foundation once stood, but the folk musicians that gathered began a tradition that transformed into the Albert Music Hall in Waretown.

The open space that was once home to Albert Place still draws a crowd. Unfortunately, discarded aluminum beer cans desecrate the natural landscape. Jage said all terrain vehicles and paintball wars are among some of the bigger problems faced by preservation teams.

"We do have an active group of staff members that go out and look at these properties," said Ryan Allen, a senior planner for the Ocean County Planning Department.

Although the land has been acquired over the years by different organizations, they all work together to preserve what they have, especially since many times they're right next door to one another. Diamond-shaped signs featuring the names of all three environmental groups indicate the boundaries of the protected lands.

Traveling down a dirt road across from Wells Mills County Park on Route 532, the newly acquired land looks no different than the land that's already protected. But when the area was rezoned in 2004, Jage knew it was worth the fight to keep it all together.

"In some respects, this pew of forest is no better than any other pew of forest," Jage said. "But this area is so much better than we realized it was."