Thank You to Everyone Who Participated in the 2021 Species on the Edge Art & Essay Contest
Congratulations to the hundreds of the hardworking and creative 5th grade students who advocated for an endangered or threatened species from New Jersey through an art piece and essay. You have inspired everyone at Conserve Wildlife Foundation with your enthusiasm for protecting our cherished wildlife.
2021 Species on the Edge Art & EssayWinners & Runners Up
Atlantic County First Place – Natasha Iliadis (Belhaven Middle School) Second Place – Daisy Turner (Belhaven Middle School)
Bergen County First Place – Sara Stern (Highland Elementary School) Second Place – Kate D’Ambrosio (Ho-Ho-Kus Public School)
Burlington County First Place – Jace Beierschmitt (Bobby’s Run School) Second Place – Samantha DeBarberie (Eleanor Rush Intermediate)
Camden County First Place – Heidi Jacobs (Haddonfield Friends School)
Cape May County First Place – Zoey Heany (West Cape May Elementary School) Second Place – Victoria Laurenzi (West Cape May Elementary School)
Essex County First Place – Selena Inahuazo (Ann Street School) Second Place – Sabina Moreira (Ann Street School)
Gloucester County First Place – Avelin Wells (J. Mason Tomlin Elementary School) Second Place – Seamus McGinty (J. Mason Tomlin Elementary School)
Hudson County First Place – Arnav Chavan (Beloved Community Charter School) Second Place – Alzahraa Hanafy (Sara M. Gilmore Academy)
Hunterdon County First Place – Jocelyn Boothe (Woodglen Middle School) Second Place – Leah Soucy (Holland Brook School)
Mercer County First Place – Gillian Appelget (Village Elementary School) Second Place – Zachary Phelan (Chapin School)
Middlesex County First Place – Saish Koul (Woodbrook Elementary School) Second Place – Aahana Hegde (Woodbrook Elementary School)
Monmouth County First Place – Vivienne Hoffman (Maple Place Middle School) Second Place – Gwen Wolfe (Maple Place Middle School)
Morris County First Place – Elizabeth Cheeran (Stonybrook Elementary School) Second Place – Samantha Quinn (Chester M. Stephens Elementary School)
Ocean County First Place – Lindsey Jamieson (Ocean Road Elementary School) Second Place – McKenna Millar (Nellie F. Bennett Elementary School)
Salem County First Place – Avamarie Lahr (Creativity CoLaboratory Charter School) Second Place – Madalyn Oliveri (Creativity CoLaboratory Charter School)
Somerset County First Place – Vanessa Castro (Stony Brook Elementary School) Second Place – Maya Rebimbas (Mt. Horeb School)
Sussex County First Place – Emma McEvilly (Sandyston-Walpack Consolidated School) Second Place – Angelina Sampson (Wantage Elementary School)
Union County First Place – Avni Toolsidas (Thomas P. Hughes Elementary School) Second Place – Alyson Sayre (Thomas P. Hughes Elementary School)
Warren County First Place – Alexandra Rucker (Allamuchy Township School) Second Place – Corinne Apor (Allamuchy Township School)
Thank you to our generous Species on the Edge Art & Essay Sponsors:
Stockton University’s Vivarium Animal Lab is currently caring for 1,108 northern diamondback terrapin hatchlings recovered by volunteers from storm drains.
Each spring, these young turtles emerge from their winter dens and make their way across roads in order to reach their summer wetland habitat. While roads are dangerous in their own right, the young terrapins are faced with another obstacle once they make the perilous journey across the blacktop: the curb.
A curb is a veritable cliff to a young terrapin, who may struggle to surmount the concrete roadblock. In their struggle, these tiny hatchlings can find themselves slipping through the grate of a roadside storm drain.
Thankfully, local Good Samaritans have been using nets to recover the trapped turtles, which are then ferried to Galloway, NJ for treatment and housing at Stockton University.
These turtles will spend the next year at the Vivarium building up their strength before being released back into the wild.
Hundreds of rescued terrapins are receiving care at the #StocktonU vivarium. They will be released into the wild with a head start. https://t.co/BV9lU6vOzK
This year marks the long expected return of Brood X, the periodical cicadas found in New Jersey and other northern states. Also know as The Great Eastern Brood, these cicadas emerge from the ground every 17 years in order to molt their skin and emerge into their adult forms to attract mates with their signature droning “BUZZ.” Once eggs are laid, the adult die off, leaving their young to hatch and burrow into the ground where they’ll wait another 17 years to start the process all over again.
The brood emerging this year first burrowed into the ground in 2004, making this species of cicada one of the longest lived insect species!
Not everyone is excited to have these large insects, which can number in the billions, buzzing about, but they’re a favorite snack of an unlikely New Jersey resident: COPPERHEADS.
Many species of wildlife take advantage of these cicada swarms by eating the insects and their shed skin, which serve as a rich source of easy protein. However, you might not have thought snakes like NJ’s copperhead would get in on the party, too!
Tom Davis of patch.com recently wrote about this interesting phenomenon, citing CWF’s wildlife guide!
Check out his article to learn more about Brood X, the cicada lifecycle, and how an unlikely reptile takes advantage of this 17 year phenomenon.
With May just around the corner, biologists and volunteers alike are preparing for the arrival of migratory shorebirds on their annual stop over in New Jersey’s Delaware Bay.
Andrew S. Lewis of NJ Spotlight News recently spoke with CWF Wildlife Biologist and Shorebird Steward program organizer Larissa Smith to discuss the 2021 shorebird season. The article highlights the history of shorebird conservation in the Delaware Bay, modern challenges to conservation due to COVID-19, and how a recent grant to the Littoral Society will help bolster this year’s efforts.
Read an excerpt of the article below and continue reading on NJSpotlight.com.
The quiet, empty beaches of South Jersey’s Delaware Bay shoreline will soon begin to stir with the sound of thousands of migrating shorebirds, pausing their long journeys from the Southern Hemisphere to the Canadian Arctic to refuel on the eggs of horseshoe crabs that emerge to spawn here each spring.
Along with this natural wonder comes a dedicated group of volunteers, called Shorebird Stewards, who assist biologists from the state and nonprofit organizations in their annual count of the bay’s most vulnerable migratory shorebirds, including the dunlin, sanderling, semipalmated sandpiper, short-billed dowitcher, ruddy turnstone and the red knot, a federally listed threatened species.
“I’ve been organizing the Shorebird Stewards since 2003, and it has always been a fairly small volunteer project, about 10-15 people,” said Larissa Smith, a biologist with the Conserve Wildlife Foundation, one of the Steward program’s partners. “This year, I’ve had more than 40 people interested.”
In a year upended by social distancing and hardship, Smith said, many people were nevertheless able to reconnect with the outdoors. “They want to help make a difference,” she said.
In part 4 of this blog series the Three Bridges eagle pair had returned to the newly installed nest platform. We are happy to report that incubation began on February 24th.
nest exchange during incubation @ Dan Brill
Nest monitors have reported that hatching was occurring on April 2nd. Since nest monitors can’t see into the nest they go by the adults behavior to indicate hatching. The adult will start sitting higher on the nest, looking down more often and moving around. The eggs hatch in the order in which they were laid, so there could be a chick, while the adult continues to incubate any remaining eggs. The adults will feed the chick and a steady supply of food will be brought into the nest. Unfortunately the cam is currently not operational. It will require access to the pole to diagnosis the problem. A visit isn’t possible at this point, due to the nesting pair.
In this rare photo, a Wild Turducken can be seen drinking in a nearby marsh. Photo by Alice Leurck.
Exciting news! The Montclair Bird Club announced today the likely discovery of a new bird species, the Wild Turducken, a heretofore-undocumented upland bird of northern New Jersey.
The new species is believed to be a hybrid of a Northern Shoveler (Spatula clypeata), Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) and a Jersey Giant Chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus), according to the Allendale Ornithology Institute (AOI).
“To discover such a rare new breed in the middle of suburbia is literally unbelievable,” said David Wheeler, Executive Director of the Conserve Wildlife Foundation.
The free-range Turducken makes its home in North Haledon on Nature Conservancy land near the summit of the 1,260-ace High Mountain Park Preserve, located in the Watchung Mountains. 46 years ago — On April 1, 1975 — the Royal Scottish Museum announced the discovery of another new species, the Bare-fronted Hoodwink. Photo courtesy of the Royal Scottish Museum Edinburgh.
The first known sighting of the elusive bird was in the woods at the Celery Farm Natural Area in Allendale, N.J., on April 1, 2016, by Joseph Koscielny of Oakland, N.J. Koscielny found a primary feather from the bird nearby, and the AOI sent it by courier pouch to the National Paraphyletic Avian Research Foundation in Patuxent, Md., for DNA testing.
As the days warm and the gloom of Winter subsides, a symphony swells in the damp woods of New Jersey.
This chorus of spring peepers, wood frogs, and other amphibians means that Spring is here and the amphibian mating season has begun. As they emerge from hibernation, frogs and toads hop and sing, while salamanders slither and march to their breeding grounds. While this journey is typically only a few hundred feet long, it can be full of peril!
The roads which fragment the natural habitat in our state act as a deadly barrier between the Winter hideaways of our resident amphibians and their Spring breeding pools.
Regular winter visitors to the Jersey Shore, this group of harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) and harp seals (Pagophilus groenlandicus) catch some sun in the tide. Photo courtesy of Joe Reynolds.
Today we focus on a winter visitor from the Arctic.
Excerpt from Chapter 13
Great White Hunter
Pick a sunny but frigid day in the heart of winter. Find a remote, windswept location along the Jersey Shore. Bring a high-powered spotting scope or binoculars, extra layers of winter clothes, and a healthy supply of patience.
Voila! That might be enough to get you a sighting of a seal – or fifty – in the Garden State.
Incredibly enough, seals are becoming more and more common along the coast each winter, eating a daily ration of up to 20 pounds of flounder, other fish, shellfish, crustaceans, and mollusks. Four species visit New Jersey’s coastal waters in a given winter. Spotted most frequently are harbor seals hauling out onto exposed sandbars or dredge spoils along the coast. Gray and hooded seals from as far as the Norwegian island of Svalbard visit less often. Each has a unique look. The gray seal’s large snout earned it the nickname “horsehead seal.” The male hooded seal inflates its nose to attract female seals – and looks like a veritable Bozo the Seal.
The harp seal, on the other hand, is the equivalent of a seal supermodel. You may have seen them many times before. In the 1980s the harp seal’s puppy-eyed white pups served as the adorable public face of the anti-seal hunting movement. Far less common in estuaries than harbor seals, the harp seal usually sticks to the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans. Nonetheless, young harp seals are found regularly on New Jersey’s coast each winter.
Sandy Hook is a great place for seeing a seal in the wild. Seals often hunt at night and spend their days resting onshore – an ideal schedule for wildlife enthusiasts. That is, for those willing to walk the most windswept waterfront locations in the coldest months of the year. Joe Reynolds, of the Bayshore Regional Watershed Council, is just such an adventurer.
“When it’s low tide on a really sunny day, you have the potential to see thirty to fifty seals out basking together on Skeleton Island,” says Reynolds.
Seals can typically be found in New Jersey from December through April. Photo courtesy of Joe Reynolds.
The Rescuers
Reynolds is also one of around a hundred active volunteers with the Marine Mammal Stranding Center. These volunteers up and down the coast serve as the eyes and ears of the unique Brigantine-based center, which was started in 1978 to rescue and rehabilitate injured or stranded seals, whales, dolphins, and sea turtles. Sheila Dean, the center’s co-director, has worked for more than two decades to help such marine animals.
“We had a little seal – we named her Tak, after the harbor where she was born, Takanassee – that was stranded just after being born,” says Dean. “Her mother left the baby on the beach – there was just no way she could keep people away. We raised it, but she was just too imprinted on humans. We ended up giving her to the Indianapolis Zoo. I felt really bad, but she would not have survived out there.”
Dean wasn’t being overprotective. A dolphin in Florida, after being rehabilitated for nine months, was released into the wild. Sharks killed it immediately upon release, with everyone watching in horror. Clearly nature takes its own course.
Many of New Jersey’s stranded seals are victims of shark bites. In 2009 at least five seals were mauled by the same shark, which was caught off the Sea Girt Reef.
“Shark-bit seals are quite common, and we sometimes get a lot of them,” says Maurice Tremblay, a Marine Mammal Stranding Center volunteer. “We even had one with a bite from an orca.”
After my tour of the center, I realize I just have to see a seal in New Jersey for myself. I had seen seals off the coast of Northern Ireland and enjoyed the fussy orchestra of the famed sea lions at San Francisco’s wharfside, but seals never seemed possible in New Jersey.
I pick the right day: it is absolutely glacial, with a winter storm scheduled to hit within a few hours. My daughter and I head first to Skeleton Island, a long barrier strip on the bay side of Sandy Hook. It is low tide, and the tangy smell of saltmarsh fills the air. Many dark, long shapes pepper the distant sandbars beyond the island, and our hopes are high. A closer look through my binoculars reveals no movement. My “seals” turn out to be driftwood logs and rocks.
We watch gulls drop clams against the rocks and plummet after them, and then we head for the northern end of Sandy Hook near Fort Hancock. Looping around, I drive south along the bay’s edge, peering through the passenger window and hoping against hope for a seal. A male red-breasted merganser catches Kayla’s eye, its green head feathers tussled in the back like a case of bedhead. I pull to the right and back up for a closer look. It is then that I see a dark shape that almost immediately goes under. It does not register as a bird, so could it be…?
I turn the car around for a direct look with my binoculars, and there it is! A clear shot of a seal head, dark black with puppy dog eyes, long face, and whiskers. We watch for a few seconds as it stares back before finally going under. Between the seal and the approaching storm, Sandy Hook might as well be the Arctic.
Ten Years Gone
Seals continue to visit the Jersey Shore each winter, with sightings steadily increasing in recent years. Among the best places to see them each winter are Sandy Hook, Liberty State Park, and Cape May. Sightings typically occur through April, so if you’re interested, best to try as soon as possible!
The Marine Mammal Stranding Center continues to protect and rehabilitate marine mammals and sea turtles along New Jersey’s coastline, with over 300 volunteers. And Joe Reynolds has since founded the nonprofit Save Coastal Wildlife in 2018 to engage people with the biodiversity along the Jersey Shore.
Fisher photo by Josh More via Flickr Creative Commons.
Wild New Jersey Revisited is a monthly series of excerpts from Conserve Wildlife Foundation executive director David Wheeler’s 2011 book Wild New Jersey: Nature Adventures in the Garden State. Today we focus on the surprising return of a rare predator to New Jersey, and the late field biologist who foretold it – then documented it.
Excerpt from Chapter 2:
The Carnivore Corridor of Stokes State Forest
On a frosty winter morning, I join a fellow adventurer for a sunrise hike into Tillman Ravine. This cold is the kind that takes your breath away, the kind that makes it hard to notice anything else – until I descend into the ravine. The rushing mountain stream twists and turns, crashing over jagged boulders and toppled hemlocks. Patches of ice coat the surfaces of riverside boulders, some icicles growing upward from the waterfall mist. Heavy recent snows and rains have the stream flowing higher than normal, overrunning some of the trail. This is one wild place.
It is easy, on this early morning, with no sound but the crashing torrent, to imagine the wildlife that lives here. A mother bear warily leading her cubs down the steep mountain slope for a drink. A mink slinking stealthily along the boulders in search of its next meal. A river otter family tumbling in the currents downstream.
One visionary wildlife researcher is doing a lot more than imagining that. Charlie Kontos is seeing it all. Through his motion-detector cameras and wilderness tracking, through his exhaustive historical research and coordination with wildlife geneticists, he is leading the charge to ensure that the species we nearly lost are still welcome here in the wilds of northwestern New Jersey. For Kontos, that safe haven cannot be some isolated pocket of land. We must restore the active wildlife corridor that connects to the Catskills and the Appalachians and the Adirondacks, all the way up into New England and the great boreal forest of Canada.
Book excerpts each month to be accompanied by timely wildlife updates
by David Wheeler
Growing up in suburban and coastal New Jersey, I was fascinated by wildlife from my earliest days. Whether catching frogs in the neighborhood, or collecting safari cards and watching Nature specials on Komodo dragons, wildlife both local and global captured my imagination like nothing else. My studies and early career focused on other areas, such as writing and communications, but the great outdoors was never far from my thoughts.
When the time was right, I decided to write what would become my book, “Wild New Jersey: Nature Adventures in the Garden State.” I spent time with many of the top scientists and naturalists in the state, as I devoted all my free time for a year to undertaking a whirlwind journey around New Jersey, experiencing its wildlife, nature destinations, and outdoor activities first-hand.
It has now been 10 years since “Wild New Jersey” was published. In those ensuing years, I became the Executive Director of Conserve Wildlife Foundation, the dynamic organization that had featured so prominently in my book. Many themes I covered then resound even more today. The across-the-board impacts of climate change on New Jersey’s wildlife. Escalating land development, particularly in suburban areas. An even greater emphasis on protecting wildlife corridors and contiguous habitat. An increasing awareness of many species thriving in urban areas against daunting odds.
For better or worse, the populations of most of New Jersey species I highlighted 10 years ago have continued on the same trends of recovery or decline. That’s good news for bald eagles, peregrine falcons, and ospreys, along with bobcats and coyotes. It’s more worrisome for many bat, amphibian and reptile species, as well as many songbirds, shorebirds, and pollinators.
Sadly, a few of the wildlife pioneers and conservation heroes with whom I was privileged to spend time or enjoy conversations while writing my book have since passed away, including field biologist Charles Kontos, Len Soucy, founder of the Raptor Trust, and Dery Bennett, founder of American Littoral Society. Their legacies carry forward today as strong as ever.
David Wheeler and his son on a more recent “Wild New Jersey” adventure in Barnegat Bay.Photo by Ben Wurst
With our past year marked by serious restrictions on both our interaction with others and the activities we can enjoy, many New Jerseyans may have a building list of adventures that we are considering once safety permits. Thankfully, these options haven’t changed much at all over the 10 years since I wrote “Wild New Jersey.” With the right timing and guides, we still can go out and enjoy dog sledding, birding on the open ocean, mountain hikes in bear country, and nighttime treks through a cranberry bog – or, on the more serene side, pontoon boat wildlife tours, river floats, seining, and bird walks led by top experts.
Those kinds of adventures are still out there for the taking in every corner of the state. Some of it can be done right now, while other trips may have to wait until we get further along in our fight against COVID-19.
In the meantime, I am excited to celebrate 10 years of Wild New Jersey with you. For the next year, Conserve Wildlife Foundation will run a seasonal excerpt each month, along with updated commentary giving context to a featured species, habitat, or locale.
Join me on Friday in kicking off our series with a book excerpt and update on the unlikely return of a predator to New Jersey’s wilds.
