Support New Jersey’s ospreys with donations matching a $12,500 challenge to help Conserve Wildlife Foundation purchase a boat.
by Ben Wurst, Habitat Program Manager
Surveying a nest on Long Beach Island in 2017, the last year we were able to utilize a state owned boat. photo by Northside Jim.
Ospreys are living barometers. They symbolize the resilience of life along the New Jersey coast. As a top tier predator who feeds exclusively on fish, their collective health is a direct link to the health of our coastal waters. Anyone can tell you that a healthy coast is essential to life at the shore. Clean water with abundant and healthy wildlife equals a booming shore economy. We have all benefited from actions and policy that have protected our air, land and water since the 1970s. Ospreys are no exception.
Banding osprey nestlings with red auxiliary bands at a nest off LBI. photo by Northside Jim.
If you live along or visit the coast, then it’s no surprise that ospreys continue to thrive in New Jersey. 2018 was yet another banner year for these coastal nesting raptors. Their large stick nests depict our rivers and estuaries while they indicate that we’re doing a good job of protecting our local environment along the coast. Today we’ve published results from last year’s nesting season in the 2018 New Jersey Osprey Project Report.
On a brisk November morning, a couple dedicated NJ Osprey Project volunteers joined myself and CWF Biologist Larissa Smith to install an osprey platform on the coastal saltmarsh of New Jersey. The new platform was installed to replace a very old and unstable platform that fell this summer. The new structure is more than twice the size of the old one and will give the nesting pair, who return in the spring, a much more resilient nest site. As you can see from the video above, it takes a bit of strength to raise up a 16′ tall wood nest platform. We decided to slow it down when WCC Volunteer, Wayne R. gives it a final push. Continue reading “Video from the Field: Osprey Platform Install”
The threats are real and these photos should alarm you!
by Ben Wurst, Habitat Program Manager
U.S. Coast Guard assists NJ Fish & Wildlife with recovering an entangled osprey on a channel marker in Cape May Harbor, Summer 2018. photo by Kathy Clark/ENSP
Photos courtesy of Chanta L Jackson, Asbury Park School District Communications Director unless otherwise noted.
It is only week two of the Conserve Wildlife Foundation (CWF) Summer Learning Experience program, a part of the Asbury Park School District Summer Camp offerings, and third-grade students have had the opportunity to not only see an osprey up close and personal but to visit a local nest and learn to simulate building the predatory bird’s nesting place.
Thanks to dedicated Conserve Wildlife Foundation of NJ staff and volunteers three osprey chicks were saved from what could have been an unhappy fate.
NJ Osprey Project Volunteers Matt Tribulski, Wayne Russell and John King were surveying osprey nests in the Wildwood back bay area this past weekend. They checked on a nest with three chicks and found that the platform top was broken and a strong possibility it could collapse, especially with any heavy rains or winds. The chicks weren’t old enough to fly and would have fallen to the marsh and died. Continue reading “Osprey Chicks Get A Necessary “Home” Upgrade”
An osprey with a balloon ribbon around its leg at Island Beach State Park. Volunteers from the Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey removed the ribbon and cleaned the osprey’s nest on Tuesday afternoon. Photo by Jeff Goldman, NJ.com
Two volunteer groups and the Seaside Heights public works department teamed to help a baby osprey that had a balloon ribbon tangled around its leg in a nest at Island Beach State Park.
