Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey is pleased to announce that it was recently awarded two grants by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation through its Delaware Watershed Conservation Fund (DWCF). The multi-year grants are Assessing American Oystercatchers to Inform Management and Restoration Strategies and Rare Turtle Research and Monitoring in the Southern Delaware River Basin.
The new American oystercatcher grant is a continuation of a similar current DWCF grant, the added years will allow for more comprehensive research and monitoring of oystercatchers on New Jersey’s Delaware Bayshore to help us determine long-term breeding trends. We will also continue to assess oystercatcher habitat use, including the development of Best Management Practices to facilitate habitat restoration on the Bayshore. New research under the expanded funding includes foraging and chick provisioning studies, as well as more banding and use of GPS transmitters to enhance tracking of oystercatcher movements within the Bayshore and beyond.
American oystercatcher incubating its nest on Delaware Bay, as viewed from one of our research nest cameras
The turtle grant will allow for trapping, and telemetry surveys for bog and spotted turtles to be conducted at understudied and historically occupied New Jersey focal sites in the southern Delaware River basin. This project aims to provide the state with updated population demographics and landscape data for the region, in particular to direct and expedite future restoration and management activities. Restoration can then proceed at the highest priority sites to ensure inhabited wetlands retain all the landscape features necessary to sustain rare turtle populations.
CWFs new grant will be our first targeted effort of spotted turtle conservation.
The DWCF, created in 2018, is funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to achieve the goals of the Delaware River Basin Conservation Act. The Act guides and supports federal, state, regional, and local partners to collaboratively identify, prioritize, and implement habitat restoration and conservation activities within the watershed.
CWF has been teaming up with partners from the USFWS New Jersey Field Office and JB MDL’s Natural Resources department to survey the installation’s forest for birds throughout the year. These surveys allow us to get an inventory of bird species found throughout the large expanses of protected natural areas within the base’s boundaries. So far this year, we have documented a diverse array of bird species passing through during migration and some resident species that stay year-round. During the springtime, we got to see warblers such as the black-and-white warbler, pine warbler, common yellowthroat, and American redstart.
Six of the forest bird species documented at the base are State-listed as either threatened or of special concern. The red-headed woodpecker, Melanerpes erythrocephalus, is a state-threatened species. They prefer open woods, both upland and wetland that contain dead or dying trees and sparse undergrowth. The Northern parula, Setophaga americana, and hooded warbler, Setophaga citrina, are both species of special concern during the breeding season. Both breed in mature forests, with the Northern parula nesting in trees and the hooded warbler nesting in shrubs. Wood thrush, Hlyocichla mustelina, is a species of special concern during the breeding season. The wood thrushes breed throughout mature deciduous and mixed forests. Ideal habitat for them includes trees that are over 50 feet fall, a moderate understory of saplings and shrubs, an open forest floor with moist soil and decaying leaf litter, and water nearby. The brown thrasher, Toxostoma rufum, is a species of special concern during the breeding season. This species is often found in woodlands with dogwood, pitch pine, or scrub oak. Lastly, the eastern whip-poor-will, Antrostomus vociferus, is another species of special concern here in NJ during the breeding season. These birds breed in dry deciduous or evergreen forests with little or no underbrush, close to open areas.
The remote coastal salt marshes of the Delaware Bayshore harbor a unique and seldom observed ecosystem, boasting a rich natural history and diverse wildlife. To help prevent the loss of these valuable habitats and their inhabitants, CWF is participating in a partner-driven, multi-year project led by Ducks Unlimited and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to enhance habitat quality and restore natural hydrology to salt marshes in Delaware and New Jersey. CWF is actively involved in the second season of biological monitoring at select Bayshore salt marshes targeted for restoration efforts designed to revegetate mudflats existing on old salt hay farms (read more about salt hay farming impacts here). At this stage of the project, our role is to gather important pre-restoration data to evaluate the anticipated impact and effectiveness of restoration techniques.
A view from one of our survey points at Dix Wildlife Management Area. Photo courtesy of Emmy Casper, CWF Wildlife Biologist.
Winter maintenance of the Barnegat Light habitat restoration site is a key element in the project’s success to benefit New Jersey’s piping plovers and other beach-nesting birds. The original project – clearing about 40 acres of dense beach vegetation and dunes to create an early-successional habitat favored by plovers and adding “ponds” to create foraging opportunities – was completed over two winters in 2019 and 2020. Each winter since, we have returned to the site for a short period, typically a week or so, to thin vegetation and reestablish foraging habitat along the pond edges in advance of nesting birds returning for the season.
This year was no exception, I was on-site in late January and early February to guide a bulldozer operator to prepare the site for plovers. Although the maintenance work we do each year is similar, the details and nuances of it vary quite a bit. Last winter, for example, one of the foraging ponds was completely sanded over from fall and early winter storms, so we spent most of the time re-digging that. This year, the ponds were in much better shape, so we had more time to focus on clearing out thick vegetation that had crept back into the site to improve the nesting substrate.
When looking at the expansive mudflats along the marshes of the Delaware Bay, it is hard to imagine that the area was once densely vegetated and home to a variety of bird species. This spring, CWF began work on a new marsh restoration project funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and led by Ducks Unlimited and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). CWF was contracted to assist with biological monitoring at sites targeted for marsh restoration along New Jersey’s side of the Delaware Bay. Restoration efforts for our sites are being directed toward mudflats that exist due to significant physical alterations made to the marsh in the past. The story of how these mudflats came to be lies in the area’s history and roots in salt hay farming.
As early as 1675, settlers arriving on the Delaware Bay built dikes in salt marshes to protect land from saltwater inflow and create an environment more conducive to salt hay farming and development. One of the most important types of salt hay harvested along the Delaware Bay was Spartinapatens, a crop that was widely used as bedding and feed for livestock due to its high nutritional value. By the mid-1800s, at least 14,000 acres of marsh were impounded in Salem County alone with comparable areas altered in both Cumberland and Cape May counties (Cook, 1870). Impoundments restricted tidal flow within the marsh, which stopped the natural process of marsh accretion in which sediment is consistently added to the marsh to increase its elevation. Additionally, drier conditions exposed marsh soil to too much air, resulting in the breakdown of soil and further loss of elevation.
Salt hay farming circa 1940’s. Photo retrieved from”From Marsh to Farm: The Landscape Transformation of Coastal New Jersey,” by Kimberly R. Sebold. Retrieved through https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/nj3/contents.htm
Earlier this year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) awarded Joint Base McGuire, Fort Dix, and Lakehurst (JB MDL) with the Military Conservation Partnership Award for outstanding efforts to protect both State and Federally listed threatened and endangered species. The award recognizes significant natural resource management achievements by military installations, particularly the conservation of important wildlife and their habitats through cooperative work with USFWS and other partners. CWF has been a major partner on many projects at JB MDL spanning from grassland habitat restoration and monitoring, myotis bat surveys and tracking, and a full mammal inventory.
Over the past six years, long term efforts have been ongoing to expand and protect grassland habitat at the McGuire Airfield. So far, roughly 600 acres have been restored to native warm season grasses with another 100 acres to be completed by next spring. The planting of species like little bluestem, sideoats grama, and blue grama has helped to create grassland bird nesting habitat. Grassland bird surveys are conducted each summer to monitor success of species like upland sandpiper and bobolink.
The population of seabeach amaranth (Amaranthus pumilus) in New Jersey has continued its upward trend for the 2023 season, marking another successful year of protecting the rare and vulnerable plant. Since 2019, CWF has partnered with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – NJ Field Office (USFWS-NJFO) in monitoring and managing the state’s population of seabeach amaranth (SBA), a federally-threatened and state-endangered coastal plant. The number of SBA in the state fluctuates each year but suffered tremendously in the past due to coastal erosion, habitat loss, and disturbances from recreational use and municipal beach management. For 87 years, from 1913 until 2000, the species wasn’t seen in New Jersey. Plants have started rebounding on certain beaches in recent years, with numbers now in the thousands.
This past winter, CWF announced a new project designed to study and monitor the population of American oystercatchers breeding along the New Jersey side of the Delaware Bay. In addition to locating nesting pairs and tracking their success, our goal is to better understand how oystercatchers utilize the bayshore habitats and what factors threaten their productivity. The data we gather with our partners at The Wetlands Institute and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will be used to inform future management decisions. We spent the past few months working hard to conduct the project’s first season of monitoring, and we are happy to say that we have made significant progress in beginning to unravel the mysteries surrounding this understudied population.
Delaware Bay American oystercatcher study area. Most oystercatcher pairs this season were concentrated in the bay beaches between Stipson Island and Heislerville WMA.
Since so little is known about this subpopulation of oystercatchers, we had a lot of ground to cover in our first season of fieldwork. First, we had to locate any breeding oystercatcher pairs across 35 sites spanning approximately 45 miles of bayshore from Cape May Point to Sea Breeze. Luckily, we had a head-start based on a preliminary census survey from 2021 that documented some already existing pairs as well as some sites with potentially suitable nesting habitat. We were also fortunate to have a dedicated seasonal technician assisting with the heavy workload. That said, figuring out how to access many of these sites was definitely a learning curve. We quickly discovered that many beaches were only reachable by boat or kayak and only during a narrow window of tide and wind conditions. Other sites were walkable, but only at peak low tides, which meant our surveys couldn’t take too long without risking becoming stranded by the rising tide.
Over the winter, biologists from CWF, Ducks Unlimited, USFWS, and Partnership for the Delaware Estuary visited sites like this marsh in Dix Wildlife Management Area to assess their restoration potential and strategize monitoring plans.
This spring, CWF will begin fieldwork for a new marsh restoration project along the Delaware Bay. The ambitious project, funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and co-led by Ducks Unlimited and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, aims to implement cost effective and low-tech marsh restoration techniques in New Jersey and Delaware salt marshes. Restoration plans will be designed to create, protect, and/or enhance habitat for multiple marsh-dependent species including black rails and saltmarsh sparrows. As a project partner, CWF will provide two seasons of biological monitoring assistance at the New Jersey sites. This week, WHYY published an article about the project, featuring representatives from CWF and other project partners. Click the link below to read the piece and learn more about some of the important work being done by the Delaware Bay!
CWF is excited to announce a new project funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Delaware Watershed Conservation Fund designed to develop and execute management strategies for American oystercatchers along the Delaware Bay. Breeding populations of American oystercatchers (State Species of Special Concern) have been well studied and monitored along New Jersey’s Atlantic Coast since 2003, but very little is known about the oystercatchers that nest on the sandy beaches along the Delaware Bay. In 2021, CWF conducted a near bay-wide window census survey to establish a baseline estimate of the Bayshore population. Thirteen oystercatcher pairs were documented across approximately 35 sites from Cape May Point to Sea Breeze, prompting a need for further research and management. This new project seeks to shed light on this understudied population and add to our scientific understanding of their management needs.
American oystercatcher. Photo courtesy of Daniel Irons
