Recently, I visited the 4th and 5th graders at ECO Charter School in Camden, NJ. With plenty of wildlife specimens in hand, I talked to the students about NJ’s rare wildlife and why it is important to protect it. I had fun interacting with these kids and they asked plenty of really good questions like “What does DDT stand for?” and “What do peregrine falcons eat?”. I gave them a homework assignment – to share their newly discovered knowledge with their friends and family members, one of the most important things in protecting wildlife. An easy lift, since each of these students participated in the Species on the Edge Art & Essay Contest and learned about one of NJ’s rare wildlife residents.
ECO Charter School 5th graders and their vibrant entries for the Species on the Edge Contest
Subaru of America generously sponsored the Species on the Edge Art & Essay Contest and specifically, they supported its expansion and promotion in Camden County, which notoriously had low participation. Without Subaru’s support, I may not have been able to visit ECO Charter School and the students may not have found out about the contest nor chose to enter. These students now have a better understand of the wildlife that shares our state with us.
CWF would like to thank all the sponsors of the Species on the Edge Art & Essay Contest:
PSEG, Church & Dwight, NJEA, Subaru of America, Verizon, and ShopRite.
Maria begins sorting and organizing the entries for the Species on the Edge Art & Essay Contest
Entries for the Species on the Edge Art & Essay Contest have been arriving at our office since early January. The contest ended recently and now the hard work begins. We need to sort, count, and organize over 2,000 entries and ready them for judgement day. That job will be done by a biologist, an educator, and an artist, all who generously agreed to volunteer their time to choose the winners. I don’t envy them since there are so many outstanding entries and the hard work by the students is evident in all of them. It is refreshing to know that thousands of kids learned about NJ’s rarest wildlife residents through the Species on the Edge Art & Essay Contest. Hopefully, that knowledge will be transferred into actions that help to preserve and protect NJ’s environment.
Interested in the environment? Want to learn from local and regional environmental experts? Then become a Rutgers Environmental Steward! There is still room (& time!) to register to become part of the Class of 2012 for the Rutgers Environmental Stewards Program!
The Rutgers Environmental Steward program provides training and experience which equips participants to contribute effectively to the process of finding solutions for environmental problems in the communities of New Jersey.
Graduates become knowledgeable about the basic processes of earth, air, water and biological systems. They increase awareness of the techniques and tools used to monitor and assess the health of the environment. They gain an understanding of the research and regulatory infrastructure of state and federal agencies operating in New Jersey that relate to environmental issues. They are given an introduction to group dynamics and community leadership.
They learn to recognize the elements of sound science and public policy based on that science. They acquire some sense of the limits of current understanding of the environment.
Training takes place regionally – in the northat the Rutgers Cooperative Extension (RCE) of Warren County in South Belvidere; in the center at Duke Farms, Hillsborough; and in the south at the Atlantic County Utilities Authority (ACUA) in Egg Harbor Township.
The iconic Space Needle, photographed from the edge of Puget Sound.
Last week – literally moments before Irene began her Garden State smack-down – my plane landed on home ground. I was returning from six days in Seattle, WA, where more than 550 professionals from 21 countries gathered for the International Conference on Ecology & Transportation (ICOET). The conference offered over 170 combined talks and posters on a variety of research, planning, ecology, and engineering topics that, by and large, had to do with animals crossing roads.
The reason I made the trip was our Amphibian Crossing project (ok, and it was also Seattle, birthplace of the counter-culture that fashioned my grungy teenagehood!). Over the last decade we’ve surveyed, mapped, and prioritized hotspots throughout the northern half of NJ where frogs and salamanders have to travel across roads to reach their breeding pools each spring. Enormous numbers are killed in doing so. The hallmark of our Amphibian Crossing project has always been the volunteer-based rescue surveys – at night, in the rain, in traffic; requiring a lot of hands and a maniacal level of commitment to plan and carry out year after year. At this point, we’ve got around 35 “high” and “highest” priority crossings…far too many to manually protect in the short-term, not to mention the long-term. Our long-term solution is to get special under-road culverts installed for these migrating amphibians, and ICOET was a place I could find folks who have done it. Continue reading “Salamanders and…Seattle?”
The last known Allegheny woodrat population lives at the base of the Palisades in northern New Jersey.
The Allegheny woodrat is a state endangered species. It was added to the endangered species list in 1991. There is one remaining population of these small mammals left in the state and they need our help this winter.
This season we are going to help the woodrat by providing it with food. We will distribute acorns, beech nuts, hickory nuts or any other nuts from native New Jersey trees in the area the woodrats live. By providing them with food we will help them survive the winter.
Collecting nuts while learning about the habits and habitat needs of the Allegheny woodrat is a great service learning project! Have your students collect native tree nuts throughout the community and help to protect one of NJ’s rarest wildlife residents.
We are collecting nuts now through October 31, 2011 to distribute to the woodrat’s location throughout the winter. If you would like to contribute to the woodrat’s winter food pantry, please drop off nuts from native New Jersey trees to ENSP’s office in Clinton, New Jersey. Please call Maria Grace at Conserve Wildlife Foundation at (609) 984-0621 for specific instructions. Nuts will be collected until October 31st.
Holding a big brown bat during a maternity colony survey. Photo by MacKenzie Hall
It’s hard to believe that it has been two months since the start of my internship with the Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey. As a rising senior in college (when did that happen?), I can attest to the fact that time flies. Last December I contacted MacKenzie Hall, a Private Lands Biologist with the CWF and bat expert with a proposition. My college had provided me with a stipend after the completion of a long list of requirements for an unpaid internship. Being an avid wildlife lover, biology student and a resident of New Jersey, the Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey seemed like the perfect fit. MacKenzie graciously agreed to take me under her [bat] wing.
On June 1, I jumped right into MacKenzie’s work with the bat population of New Jersey. I was quickly contacting volunteers, designing driving routes and delivering acoustic bat detectors. We were working on assessing the bat population of New Jersey with the use of five brand new acoustic bat detectors split amongst forty volunteers.
SPECIES ON THE EDGE ART & ESSAY CONTEST AWARDS CEREMONY
by Karena DiLeo, Assistant Biologist
The Species on the Edge Art & Essay Contest Awards Ceremony was May 6th at the New Jersey Education Association in Trenton. We had a great turn out and would like to thank everyone who attended and submitted entries into the contest. We received over 2,000 entries this year! Winning artwork is currently on display at NJ Audubon’s Plainsboro Preserve and will travel to Liberty State Park on June 6th.
Angela Guo from Mercer County received her First Place certificate from CWF Executive Director Margaret O'Gorman and Board Member and sponsor Bob Coleman.
Matt Klewin and Liz Silvernail at the CWF table.Rebecca and Tari Clark with their new eagle birdhouse.
On Sunday May 1st Liz Silvernail, CWF Director of Development, and I spent the day at the Atlantic County Utilities Authority Earth Day celebration. The weather was gorgeous and we were busy all day talking to people about CWF and the different projects that we are working on. Kids especially stopped by to see the mounted Barred Owl, Peregrine Falcon and turtle shells. Also helping at the table were volunteers Matt Klewin, Margaret Klewin-Atack and their daughter Rhianna. Their team the, Wrending Talons, which has been together for 18 years, will be participating in the World Series of Birding on May 14th and CWF is the recipient of their pledges.
We also had a free raffle for an eagle bird house made by eagle project volunteer Kevin Buynie. The winners were Tari Clark
and her daughter Rebecca. They were thrilled to be the winners and were excited to see if any birds would nest in the house this year.
This week I had the opportunity to speak to a group of 5th grade students at the Ocean City Intermediate School. The group of 44 students are in Mrs. Rosander’s science class. Over the holidays the students earned money for a charity and this year they chose to adopt a piping plover for their classroom through the CWF Adopt a species program.
As part of the adoption they received a classroom visit by a CWF staff person, which was me. I spoke about NJ’s rare wildlife and of course their adopted species the Piping Plover. The students were already very knowledgeable about NJ Endangered and Threatened species. One of their class assignments was to write an essay or draw a picture of one of NJ’s E & T species. For extra credit they could do both and those were entered in the Species on the Edge Art & Essay contest. The students had a lot of great questions for me and I think there are some future environmentalists in the group!
On Saturday February 5th thirty eagle project volunteers met to discuss the 2011 eagle season. The meeting took place during the Cumberland County Eagle Festival which is held the first Saturday in February. It was a rainy day but that didn’t keep the volunteers away.
During the festival there were talks, walks, vendors and educational displays. Eagle Project volunteer Kevin Buynie made and donated two eagle shaped bird houses to CWF. We raffled one off at the festival and it was a big hit!
People stopped by the CWF table and reported eagle sightings and a few possible new eagle nests. It is always nice to see how interested people are in eagles, raptors and wildlife in general.
Thank you to everyone who came out to visit us and support our work to monitor and conserve eagles in New Jersey!
