Tag: amphibian

FINDING ANSWERS TO NJ PROBLEMS AT ICOET

By MacKenzie Hall, Private Lands Biologist

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?”

By Karena DiLeo, Assistant Biologist

Well, it’s that time of year again.  As the temperature slowly climb and the ground thaws with spring rains, New Jersey amphibians emerge from their upland habitat and begin their long and increasingly treacherous journey to their spring breeding pools.

This March marked my first official amphibian migration night with Conserve Wildlife Foundation’s Amphibian Crossing Project.  As always, any potential migration night begins with frantic checking for weather updates, a call to volunteers to suit up and meet us at rescue sites, early arrival to set up road signs and safety equipment, and hoping the rains continue…we wait.  We wait as rush hour begins, the traffic steadily increasing as dusk falls, and then it happens: one by one, we spot wood frogs and spotted salamanders on the road edges- hesitating to leave the coverage of the forest almost like they know the roads bisecting their ancestral migration paths may prove an impassable barrier.

This past Thursday, our destination was a rescue site on East Shore Drive in Stillwater Township.  With the help of dedicated volunteers, including boy scouts from local Patriots Path Council, we patrolled almost 250 meters of roadway and rescued 572 frogs, salamanders, and newts in just 2 ½ hours—that’s 229 amphibians per hour!  Within this short span of time we also waved 70 cars through- most of which seemed oblivious to natural phenomenon taking place under their wheels.

By 10pm, migration had slowed and more importantly traffic had too.  So it was on to the next site.  MacKenzie and I wanted to check out how a site on a busy road faired in Liberty Township.  The results were disheartening—within a narrow corridor we saw at least 50 dead frogs and salamanders littering the road.  During the hour we patrolled, 50 spotted salamanders were counted (and moved) trying to cross a road with still significant traffic at 11pm at night.

If  hundreds of amphibians died within hours in this narrow corridor- imagine how many thousands are killed throughout the state each rainy spring night.  Each individual’s death marks a loss to the population but with females carrying between 200 and 2,000 eggs it marks a significant loss not only to their species future generations but also to the ecosystem as an important food source to other animals.

I knew the importance of amphibian migration and the potential extirpation populations were facing due to roads- I had seen other migration nights but I had never before seen the mass mortalities on a single road.  So please on the next rainy spring night, leave your car in your driveway and instead grab a flashlight and see what you can find or contact CWF and become one of our dedicated Amphibian Crossing volunteers!

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Volunteers needed for 2011 season

by Larissa Smith, Assistant Biologist and Volunteer Manager

If you enjoy hearing the sounds of frogs and toads and like a bit of adventure then the NJ Calling Amphibian Project (CAMP) might be the right project for you!  Each of the 16 species of frogs and toads in NJ has a unique vocalization or “call” that can be heard during their mating season.  The Conserve Wildlife Foundation of NJ is actively recruiting  volunteers to participate in a statewide Calling Amphibian Monitoring Program (CAMP). Fourteen CAMP routes are currently available for the 2011 season.

• Click here to learn more about volunteering.
• For detailed project information, click here.
• To view results from the 2010 season, click here.

If you are interested in learning more about the CAMP project please contact Larissa Smith at Larissa.Smith@hughes.net or 609.628.0402