How Droughts Affect Wildlife

New Jersey is going through a historic drought period this autumn. It affects people with fire hazards and drinking water concerns. Drought also has a significant impact on wildlife, affecting their habitat, food availability, behavior, and survival. Dry conditions increase the likelihood of wildfires, destroying habitats and killing or displacing animals.

Reduced Water Availability - has an impact on aquatic life as streams, rivers, ponds, and wetlands dry up or shrink, reducing habitats for fish, amphibians, and other aquatic species.

Terrestrial species - Animals may need to travel longer distances to find water, increasing the risk of dehydration, exhaustion, and predation.

Decline in Food Sources - Drought can stunt plant growth, reducing the availability of leaves, seeds, fruits, and flowers that many animals rely on. Suburban deer, for example, are more likely to visit homes to feed on landscaping. Animals may enter new areas, increasing human-wildlife conflicts.

Predators suffer when prey populations decline due to lack of food or water.

Habitat Loss comes with shrinking water bodies and drying vegetation reducing nesting, breeding, and shelter areas for species such as birds, amphibians, and insects. Species that fail to adapt may face population declines, impacting predators and prey in the food chain.

Animals compete for limited resources, leading to heightened stress, aggression, and displacement of weaker species.

Migration patterns may change as species search for water and food, disrupting ecosystems.

Health and Survival Challenges occur because drought increases vulnerability to diseases, especially in weakened animals. The risk of starvation and dehydration rises. Limited water can concentrate animals around scarce waterholes, making them more vulnerable to predators.

Drought New Jersey

Photos at Manasquan Reservoir via Instagram
by @katewattphoto and @hiker_moments

New Jersey as well as other states are in the midst of a serious drought that is affecting waters supplies, creating fire hazards and also affecting wildlife.

North Jersey is expected to get some much-needed rain on Wednesday evening with rain continuing Thursday and tapering off Thursday night. The region could get up to 1.25 inches of rain. But the state is way behind normal levels.

For New Jersey, October was the driest month since at least 1895, when record-keeping began. The state’s top climate official called the month a “shutout” with almost no precipitation anywhere in the Garden State.

Manasquan Reservoir is now under 50% capacity. 

Bergen County alone has had just 2.2 inches of rain in the past 90 days, 83% below normal. Oradell, Woodcliff Lake, Lake Tappan, the 3 reservoirs on the Hackensack River, are at 58% capacity. Normally at this time of year they are at 61% capacity. This time last year they were at 95%. The Veolia system system supplies water to 800,000 residents of Bergen and Hudson counties.

Wanaque, Monksville are the two reservoirs operated by the North Jersey District Water Supply Commission. The Wanaque was at 44% and the backup Monksville was at 87% on Monday, Nov. 18. Combined they were at 52%. Normally at this time of year they are at 67%. Last year at this time they were at 82%. The Wanaque provides water to more than 100 municipalities in North Jersey, from Alpine to Newark.

Firefighters across New Jersey are battling a number of wildfires during this record-breaking dry spell that is affecting the entire Northeast. Since early October, the New Jersey Forest Fire Service has responded to 537 wildfires, a more than 1,300% increase in wildfires over the same period last year. The New Jersey Office of Emergency Management has deployed the State’s All-Hazards Incident Management Team to supplement operations. The Jennings Creek wildfire, burning along New Jersey’s border with New York, claimed the life of New York State Parks System employee Dariel Vasquez as he fought the fire on Saturday.

Long-term weather forecasts suggest the winter ahead may be drier than normal too. It is nothing like California, where wildfires routinely destroy hundreds of thousands of acres a year. But raging fires — which prompted local evacuations this past weekend and smoke wafting into New York City have given residents and political leaders alike a taste of West Coast life in a warming climate. Last year, our region’s air was dangerously polluted by smoke from fires in Canada.

DEP Press Release on the drought

Environmental Groups Sue New Jersey Over Sturgeon Deaths

The environmental groups Riverkeeper and the Delaware Riverkeeper Network filed separate lawsuits against New York, New Jersey and Delaware over what the organizations allege are the states’ violations of the Endangered Species Act.Their concerns are about the Atlantic sturgeon, which spends much of its life in the Atlantic Ocean but travels up rivers on the eastern seaboard to spawn.

Sturgeons can live more than 60 years and reach massive sizes. In 2024, a sturgeon was caught in the Hudson River near Hyde Park that weighed 220 pounds and measured more than 6 feet. The fish was caught and released as part of the state Hudson River Estuary’s sturgeon monitoring program.

Sturgeon    NOAA photo

Part of this concern is about what is known as "bycatch," The lawsuit states that: “State-authorized commercial fisheries are allowed to use state-licensed fishing equipment in waters where Atlantic sturgeon are known to live, causing bycatch of Atlantic sturgeon. Studies show that Atlantic sturgeon is known bycatch in several commercial fisheries within New York state’s sovereign waters, including the striped bass, summer flounder, longfin inshore squid, bluefish, scup, tautog, winter flounder, weakfish, winter skate, silver hake, and little skate fisheries.” Nine of these 11 species are caught with either trawls or gill nets, which are known to accidentally catch sturgeon.

Anglers often hrow bycatch back into the water, but sturgeon caught this way are often unable to reproduce and can die, according to the lawsuit.

Extrapolating harvest figures from the late 1800s show about 180,000 spawning female sturgeon in the Delaware River at the time, according to Delaware Riverkeeper Network Restoration Director Erik Silldorff. Today, there are fewer than 250 adults of both sexes. Only 466 adult sturgeon remain in the Hudson River, according to Riverkeeper President Tracy Brown.

Our New Jersey Volcano

Once upon a Jersey time

Sure, New Jersey had volcanoes. Our modern New Jersey once had an active volcano roughly the size of Mount St. Helens.

The site is now known as Rutan Hill in Wantage, NJ, but if we could go back to 430 million years ago, the Beemerville Volcano would be 10 to 20 miles across and spewing lava and ash for millions of years,.

Geologists say that the Beemerville Volcano is an extinct volcano and what we call Rutan Hill is what remains of the “volcanic neck.” The Sussex County location is 7 miles south of New Jersey’s highest elevation at the High Point Monument.

No worries about an eruption but a study from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory identified a new unmapped fault line that runs through Sussex County. On April 5, 2024 a magnitude 4.8 earthquake rocked New York City and shook sections of New Jersey. That's a bit more frightening for our time.

The hill and volcano neck is on private land but there is a road leading up the volcano called Volcanic Hill Road.