The spotlight was on the third graders at Ridge Street Elementary School during the Annual Bird Festival! Over the school year, the Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey guided third graders at Ridge Street Elementary School in Newark, New Jersey through an exploration of the state’s fascinating birds as part of the Soaring with STEAM curriculum. Students delved into the lives of ospreys, peregrine falcons, bald eagles, and other avian species while engaging in STEM-based projects. To culminate their learning journey, the third graders organized a festival aimed at educating parents, visitors, and younger students about the diverse birdlife in New Jersey.
Students gather to learn about peregrine falcons from third graders at Ridge Street Elementary School. Photo Credit: Ashley Menniti
For more than twenty years, Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey has been organizing the Species on the Edge Art & Essay Contest, inviting all fifth graders in New Jersey to participate. This year marked another successful run, with an array of imaginative and captivating submissions pouring in from all twenty-one counties. Each entry examined the plight of a threatened or endangered species native to New Jersey.
To take part in the Species on the Edge Art & Essay Contest, students must craft an original piece of handmade artwork and compose an essay responding to a provided prompt. Both components of their submission center around a single at-risk species from New Jersey. We typically find that some species are represented more than others. This year, the golden-winged warbler stood out with numerous striking artworks spotlighting this bird. Other frequently chosen species included the blue whale, bobcat, and red-headed woodpecker.
Blue Whale by Chelsea Li (Jefferson Elementary School, Union County)
Winter maintenance of the Barnegat Light habitat restoration site is a key element in the project’s success to benefit New Jersey’s piping plovers and other beach-nesting birds. The original project – clearing about 40 acres of dense beach vegetation and dunes to create an early-successional habitat favored by plovers and adding “ponds” to create foraging opportunities – was completed over two winters in 2019 and 2020. Each winter since, we have returned to the site for a short period, typically a week or so, to thin vegetation and reestablish foraging habitat along the pond edges in advance of nesting birds returning for the season.
This year was no exception, I was on-site in late January and early February to guide a bulldozer operator to prepare the site for plovers. Although the maintenance work we do each year is similar, the details and nuances of it vary quite a bit. Last winter, for example, one of the foraging ponds was completely sanded over from fall and early winter storms, so we spent most of the time re-digging that. This year, the ponds were in much better shape, so we had more time to focus on clearing out thick vegetation that had crept back into the site to improve the nesting substrate.
In the spring and summer of 2023, CWF set up over 100 field cameras in a variety of habitats along mammal travel paths at the Joint Base in Lakehurst. The study captured a glimpse of what wildlife does when they think no one is watching.
To start, here is an abbreviated species list of most of the wildlife captured on camera. We were not surprised to find that nearly 80% of our captures were of white-tailed deer! Unfortunately, no captures of black bears have been reported in the area in previous years. Check out some of the captures below!
Emmy grew up on the Jersey Shore, where she developed a strong passion for coastal wildlife conservation. In 2020 she joined CWF as a beach-nesting bird technician and spent three seasons monitoring populations of piping plovers, American oystercatchers, and colonial bird species at Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge. During her third season, she served as the crew leader and helped lead the first official season of bird monitoring on Horseshoe Island. Since joining the full-time staff in 2022, Emmy has traded the Atlantic Coast for the Delaware Bayshore, where she manages CWF’s new American oystercatcher and salt marsh restoration projects. She holds a B.S. and an M.S. in Biology from Fordham University, where she conducted her thesis on the molecular analysis of shorebird diet during spring migration in Jamaica Bay.
What’s your favorite species and why?
It’s almost impossible to choose, but piping plovers are so special to me. They jump-started my career in conservation, and their resilience in the face of many challenges inspires me to persevere in my own life.
What’s the most surprising or unusual thing that has happened to you while doing field work?
I was pretty flabbergasted when a piping plover pair laid a seven-egg nest during my first field season at Holgate. The pair’s original four-egg nest had been flooded, so we re-assembled it with the hope that the birds would resume incubating the eggs. Instead, the pair decided to lay three new eggs in the same nest! Unfortunately, the eggs were depredated before they could hatch, but I think a brood with 7+ chicks would have been a sight to behold.
This year, we celebrate fifty years of one of the most critical conservation laws in the United States. On December 28th, 1973 the Endangered Species Act (ESA) was passed by Congress. The ESA has prevented 99% of all fish, wildlife, and plants under its protection from going extinct – an incredible feat. Scientists estimate more than 200 at risk species would have gone extinct if not for the development of the ESA. The ESA provides a legal framework to conserve and protect listed species and has safeguarded the biodiversity across the nation, supported the recovery of imperiled species, and conserved the critical habitats they depend on.
Piping plovers are just one at-risk species listed under the ESA.
Currently there are over 1,600 endangered and threatened species listed under the ESA in the United States. Once a species is listed, a full range of protections available under the ESA goes into effect, including prohibitions on killing, harming, or otherwise “taking” a species. To see a complete list of listed vertebrates and invertebrates click the button below:
The ESA is fundamental to our work at Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey and has allowed us to be better ambassadors for New Jersey’s threatened and endangered wildlife.
When CWF began monitoring American oystercatchers nesting on the Delaware Bay this past spring, we also set out to place field-readable bands on as many oystercatcher adults and chicks as logistically possible. Band resights allow biologists to collect a wealth of information about site fidelity, habitat use, dispersal, and migration, especially when data is collected over many years. Since the Delaware Bay population of oystercatchers was previously unmonitored, we have a lot to learn about their life histories and how they may differ from other oystercatchers in the state, if at all. Where are these birds staging and wintering? Do breeding adults return to the same mates and nesting locations each year? Where do fledged chicks disperse, and will they return to their natal grounds on the Delaware Bay to breed upon reaching sexual maturity? Banding efforts, combined with resight data reported by biologists, dedicated volunteers, and the general public will help answer these questions (and more) as we increase the number of marked individuals on the Bayshore.
Orange C41 (aka “Crouton”) being equipped with a metal federal band on the lower leg. The color of the field-reable bands on the upper legs represents which state the bird was banded in (New Jersey and New York use orange), while the alphanumeric code on the band is unique to the individual bird. All handling of birds is conducted by trained individuals under proper permits.
This year was an especially challenging one for beach nesting birds in New Jersey. Most of the species fared poorly on a statewide basis, and even though they can withstand periodic down years, several trends are worrisome to biologists and wildlife managers.
The state’s piping plover breeding population remained the same as last year with 118 pairs, which is also about the same as the long-term average since federal listing. However, productivity was just 0.53 chicks fledged per pair, the second lowest since federal listing and well below the levels believed necessary to grow the population. Of particular concern, productivity has been low for three consecutive years after a number of years of above average success. Productivity is one of the main drivers of population (up or down) and small populations are especially sensitive to even small changes, so it is expected that the population is likely to drop over the next few years, further stagnating plover recovery in the state.
Meanwhile, there was a record number (53) of breeding pairs of piping plovers at Holgate, a unit of the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, that is monitored by CWF through a cooperative agreement with the Refuge. This positive trend, almost a four-fold increase has occurred since Superstorm Sandy enhanced the habitat for plovers at the site, has been an ongoing highlight for the state in recent years. Nonetheless, it has not been accompanied by similar increases elsewhere in the state, so it has not led to any statewide recovery. Productivity for the large concentration of piping plovers at Holgate was above the statewide average in 2023 but the lowest level over the past decade, so it was also a down year for this site, where expectations typically run high that it will help boost statewide productivity.
CWF’s “Howls for Owls” event at Screamin’ Hill Brewery in Cream Ridge, New Jersey was certainly among our most fun fall activities. Owl enthusiasts flocked to this 170-acre farm for an evening of family-friendly activities in celebration of barn owls. Children and adults alike enjoyed dissecting owl pellets, creating owl masks, making adorable pinecone owls, and participating in three rounds of owl-themed trivia. Many attendees even came dressed in owl costumes!
Activities were designed to be fun and to teach attendees about owl adaptations. Owl pellet dissection was one of the most popular things to do. Children and their parents often worked together to extract all the bones found within a pellet and figure out what the owl had consumed.
Kids also made special owl masks with tubes around the eyes to mimic the oblong shape of an owl’s eye. Owl eyes are fixed in place and shaped more like a doorknob or tube than a sphere. When the mask is on, kids discover that they can only see in front of them and must rotate their heads around to look from side to side- just like an owl. Because owls cannot move their eyes, they are adapted to turn their head about 270 degrees around!
“Howls for Owls” had activities for everyone! Crafts, trivia, owl pellet dissection, and other activities kept visitors busy.
This marked the second year that CWF worked in close partnership with New Jersey Fish and Wildlife and Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge (EBF) to monitor and manage birds on Horseshoe Island. The island, located just offshore on the southern edge of the Little Egg Inlet, has quickly become one of the most important sites for beach nesting birds in the state, as well as a critical resting and feeding site for migratory shorebirds.
Horseshoe Island hosted the state’s largest black skimmer (state endangered) colony this year with just over 1400 total adults or about 700 pairs. Although flooding and some avian predators impacted the overall nesting success at the island, at least 225 skimmer chicks “fledged” from the site. Horseshoe’s skimmer fledglings, along with those from nearby Holgate, a unit of EBF, and especially from Stone Harbor Point in Cape May County, made 2023 a moderately good productivity year for black skimmers in New Jersey.
A small portion of the black skimmer and royal tern colony on Horseshoe Island. Photo credit: Teri Bowers
