Tag: New Jersey Division of Fish & Wildlife

Studying the New Jersey Endangered Eastern Tiger Salamander

Conserve Wildlife Foundation is excited to celebrate Amphibian Awareness Month during March 2015! Follow us on social media and be sure to check your email (sign up for our list) for weekly stories on the amphibians of the Garden State and our work to protect them. 

By: Larissa Smith, Wildlife Biologist/Volunteer Manager

This week, Conserve Wildlife Foundation, New Jersey Division of Fish & Wildlife Endangered and Nongame Species Program (ENSP), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists and dedicated trained volunteers surveyed a known Eastern Tiger Salamander breeding vernal pool complex. Tiger Salamanders emerge from their underground burrows in the early winter to breed and lay egg masses in the pools. By March, the adults have returned to their burrows.

 

Biologists and volunteers go out to pools during the winter months to survey for egg masses to determine if the pools are being used by Tiger Salamanders. The cold winter made getting out to pools difficult due to the ice cover, so now that it is warming up we hoped to still be able to find egg masses that hadn’t yet hatched.

 

One hundred sixty egg masses were found in the largest pool, some the of eggs had already hatched but others were still intact. Tiger Salamander larvae was seen along with the larvae of the Marbled Salamander. Vernal pools are breeding grounds for many species which is why it is so important to protect them.

 

 

In New Jersey, there are only 15 known Tiger Salamander breeding pools in the southern most part of the state. Tiger Salamanders themselves are targeted by collectors for the pet trade which is why their breeding locations are kept a secret. Their habitat is declining due to habitat loss and fragmentation, development, pollution, changes in hydrology, and climate change.

 

To see what biologists are doing to protect them visit:

• Conserve Wildlife Foundation’s Online Field Guide: Eastern Tiger Salamander
• Conserve Wildlife Foundation’s Blog: Protecting Eastern Tiger Salamanders in New Jersey
• Conserve Wildlife Foundation’s Blog: Photo from the Field
• Conserve Wildlife Foundation’s Blog: Planting for Butterflies

Larissa Smith is a Wildlife Biologist and the Volunteer Manager for Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey.

“Chucks” and Occasional Groans of New Species Caught on Video by Former CWF Biologist

Conserve Wildlife Foundation is excited to celebrate Amphibian Awareness Month during March 2015! Follow us on social media and be sure to check your email (sign up for our list) for weekly stories on the amphibians of the Garden State and our work to protect them. 

By: Lindsay McNamara, Communications Coordinator

Remember back in late October of 2014 when word quickly spread about a new frog species in New Jersey? The Atlantic Coast leopard frog is mint-gray to light olive green with medium to dark spots. The frog has been found along the Delaware River and Bayshore, along Atlantic Ocean coastline, in the Meadowlands and on Staten Island.

 

Did you know this Jersey frog groans and makes cough-like sounds or “chucks” rather than typical croaking sounds? Listen closely while you watch the video, the sounds originally caught on film by former Conserve Wildlife Foundation biologist Brian Zarate, below to hear the Atlantic Coast leopard frog’s distinctive call:

 

 

Although other leopard frog species, like the southern leopard frog and northern leopard frog, have been recognized and found in New Jersey’s wetlands for some time, researchers only recently gained the ability to use technology such as DNA and digital bioacoustic analysis to present thorough evidence that the Atlantic Coast leopard frog was a unique species.

 

In March 2003, CWF Biologist Brian Zarate and other scientists volunteered to survey salamanders at the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in Morris County, New Jersey. As the biologists gathered in the parking lot, they heard an unfamiliar sounding frog. The group captured the frog and took photos, reasoning that it wasn’t the common southern leopard frog, and that might be a northern leopard frog released into the wild.

 

Zarate, now a zoologist with the state’s Division of Fish and Wildlife, moved on to other projects, but in 2007 he checked in on the strange frogs. He heard them near the same Great Swamp parking lot. He posted a video of the frog on YouTube.

 

Four years later, the group returned to Great Swamp, and found the strange frog there and in several other places too. Through the partnership of Zarate, Jeremy Feinberg, a Rutgers doctoral candidate, and Eric Kiviat, a collaborator with Hudsonia Ltd., and the implementation of new technology, it was proven that the strange frog was indeed a different species of leopard frog, the Atlantic Coast leopard frog.

 

Starting this spring, Endangered & Nongame Species Program biologists, including Zarate, will begin a two-year project mapping the potential range of the Atlantic Coast leopard frog. Biologists and volunteers alike will comb New Jersey’s wetlands in search of evidence of the frog and collect data on its habitat preferences.

 

Looking to report a possible sighting of an Atlantic Coast Leopard Frog? Contact Brian Zarate at brian.zarate@dep.state.nj.us.

 

Learn more:

• NorthJersey.com: Researchers Hope to Learn More about “New” Species of Frog Found in the Meadowlands
• New Jersey Division of Fish & Wildlife: Atlantic Coast Leopard Frog
• Philly.com: In New Jersey, a Newly Discovered Species of Frog
• NorthJersey.com: New Species of Frog Found in the Meadowlands

 

Lindsay McNamara is the Communications Coordinator for Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey.

 

Meeting our goals…we can only hope!

by Ben Wurst, Habitat Program Manager

In 1993-94 six young peregrine falcons were released at 20 West State Street (Mary G. Roebling Building) in Trenton to help bolster the population of urban nesting falcons in the area. Currently the closest nest is 20 miles away at the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge (where they also have a camera at the nest). Twenty years later and we may finally get some nesting falcons in Trenton! It all started when Jean Bickal, a worker in the building, noticed a falcon that often perched on the building ledges. From there Kathy Clark, a Zoologist with New Jersey Division of Fish & Wildlife made a site visit and took measurements to see if we could fit a nestbox (dog igloo) out a window on the 10th floor, which also had a roof on it. It appeared one would fit so we setup a date to install the new nestbox.

 

Cities and urban areas actually provide suitable habitat for falcons. Urban areas usually have lots of ledges under bridges or on buildings for them to nest, and abundant prey, in the form of pigeons and other songbirds. In New Jersey we have three other pairs that nest on buildings in Jersey City, Elizabeth, and Atlantic City, plus pairs that nest on the Tacony-Palmyra, Walt Whitman, Betsy Ross, and Burlington-Bristol Bridges.

 

On February 5th we helped install a new nestbox on top of a roof at 20 W. State St. We’re hoping that the falcon seen that day will find a mate and use the nestbox to raise young. Fingers crossed that we get some good news soon!

 

Learn more:

• Conserve Wildlife Foundation’s Online Field Guide: Peregrine Falcon
• Conserve Wildlife Foundation’s Peregrine Project

Ben Wurst is the Habitat Program Manager for Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey.