Hurricane Sandy Restoration: Middle Township

via the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service  also see the USFWS Northeast website

Hurricane Sandy taught us that the coast is an ever-changing environment, vulnerable to sea-level rise and powerful storms. Since Sandy made landfall in October 2012, The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been working with other federal agencies and conservation partners to restore the Atlantic Coast by enhancing habitats that protect our coastal communities and sustain people and wildlife. These efforts are supported by funding from the Department of the Interior through the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2013.

Recognizing the interconnected nature of our conservation work, today we launch the first in a series of videos highlighting communities impacted by Hurricane Sandy and their journey toward recovery. This first video outlines a $1.65 million beach habitat restoration project along the shores of Delaware Bay that is already benefiting native horseshoe crabs and migrating shorebirds. At the same time, the project will help local communities like Middle Township, New Jersey, whose Mayor Tim Donohue describes how strengthening natural defenses will in turn protect homes and support the area's ecotourism industry.

This project and others like it are designed to support decisive and informed actions now with our partners to safeguard our coastal communities for years to come.

At Birthday #350, Some New Jersey Firsts

Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge

New Jersey celebrates its 350th anniversary and Michele Byers did a post on New Jersey "firsts." You might know that Thomas Edison did the first phonograph, incandescent light bulb and the first motion picture projector. (The first town in the world to be lighted with overhead wires was Roselle, NJ.)

Lesser known firsts include NJ claiming the first cultivated blueberries, developed by Elizabeth White and Dr. Frederick Coville in the Burlington County Pine Barrens in 1916. They are our state fruit.

But the part that caught my eye were 4 first in the area of parks and conservation.

1. The Morristown National Historic Park, where George Washington's troops spent the winter of 1779-80, is America's first historic park. 
2. The Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge includes the first federally-designated wilderness area east of the Mississippi. 
3. The New Jersey Pinelands are America's first and only national reserve. 
4. The Essex County Park System was the first in the country.

At the Morristown National Historic Park

 That's important for this first and only state where all counties are classified as metropolitan areas and we rank an unenviable first in population density in the U.S. (with an average of 1030 people per square mile).

That leads to another first, one that’s not so exciting and fortunately has not yet happened. New Jersey is on track to become the first state to reach full build-out, the point where all land is either preserved or developed. It’s crucial to keep saving parks and open spaces so when the Garden State does reach build-out, most if not all of our most critical lands are preserved rather than paved.

For more information about preserving New Jersey’s land and natural resources, visit the New Jersey Conservation Foundation website at www.njconservation.org

Moths

Automeris io - Io Moth - At Wells Mills County Park in Waretown, NJ by Shawn Wainwright

This is the close of National Moth Week. It was instituted to celebrates the beauty, life cycles, and habitats of moths. This year, National Moth Week is spotlighting Silk Moths around the world. Many of the silk moths are stunningly beautiful but many are also in decline. Silk moths are distantly related to the moth that is used in silk production. The adults also have greatly reduced mouthparts and do not feed. They simply find a mate and die.

This article from The NY Times has a title that says a lot about the moth - An Exaltation of Moths, Much-Maligned Kin of the Butterfly.

Lepidoptera is a large order of insects that includes moths and butterflies. Taxonomically, moths are not easily differentiated from butterflies.

Many attempts have been made to subdivide the Lepidoptera into groups but these names have failed to persist.

There are four butterflies on NJ's endangered species list: Mitchell's Satyr, Neonympha m. mitchellii, Silver-bordered ritillary Bolaria selene myrina, Arogos Skipper Atrytone arogos arogos and the Checkered white Pontia protodice

Scientists estimate there are 150,000 to more than 500,000 moth species. Their colors and patterns are either dazzling or so cryptic that they define camouflage. Shapes and sizes span the gamut from as small as a pinhead to as large as an adult’s hand. Most moths are nocturnal, but some fly like butterflies during the day.

Hyalophora cecropia - Cecropia Moth from Shawn Wainwright's incredible
collection of NJ moth and butterfly photos on Flickr

Nocturnal insectivores often feed on moths; these include some bats, some species of owls and other species of birds. Moths also are eaten by some lizards, and by cats, dogs, rodents, and some bears.

As beautiful as moths can be, many of them are pests. In New Jersey, the Gypsy Moth is a serious pest that feeds on hundreds of varieties of trees and shrubs. The moth prefers the oak as a host tree - such as New Jersey’s state tree, Northern red oak.

The Gypsy Moth, originally from Europe, was introduced to Massachusetts in 1869 by a French botanist trying to develop the silkworm industry. Once the insects escaped from his laboratory, they colonized and spread. Currently gypsy moths populate 19 states. Without intervention this pest spreads at a rate of about 13 miles per year.

Adult male gypsy moth  Lymantria dispar dispar

Whales Off the NJ Coast This Month May Be Threatened By Research

RIGHT WHALE Eubalaena glacialis with calf. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Recent whale sightings off Deal and Lavalette are a reminder that whales are in the middle of their annual migration north past our beaches. Seeing a humpback breaching the surface and landing with thunderous splashes is still rare enough to be news, but the whales are out there.

In what may seem surprising, some environmental groups have opposed a recent "climate change" study by Rutgers University because of whales and other marine mammals.

Environmentalists have joined Governor Chris Christie in opposing research funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and conducted by Rutgers University and the University of Texas. They planned to to send ear-shattering sound blasts to the ocean floor off the New Jersey shore to create three-dimensional images of sediment lying thousands of feet beneath the seabed. This will supposedly help determine how the coastline has advanced and retreated during times of historic climate change.

But many environmental groups and some commercial and recreational fishing interests argue that the study would harm dolphins, whales, and other marine life by subjecting them to sounds blasts of 250 decibels or more every five seconds for 34 days.

Cassandra Ornell, a staff scientist for Clean Ocean Action, a coalition of more than 125 groups, conceded that opposing a federally funded climate change study “is kind of unusual for us.”

Whales are more plentiful off the Jersey coast now because of the annual spring migration from their southern winter grounds to their northern summer grounds.

Sightings have been of the dramatic humpback whale. They are feeding on small schooling fishes, such as menhaden (aka bunker). We also have right whales, minke whales and fin whales passing by our coast, though those species tend to stay further offshore.

The research is also of concern because humpbacks are traveling with calves.

 Size compared to an average human - via Wikimedia Commons.

Fishermen can encounter whales while fishing on top of schools of bunker for striped bass. This occurred this summer off Asbury Park when fisherman met up with a fin whale.

The right whale, in particular, is considered highly endangered and boaters are supposed to keep a distance of 100+ feet from all whales and 500 yards from right whales.

The seriously endangered right whale (whose name came from whalers who said it was the "right" whale to hunt) are estimated at only 300 living mainly off the eastern coast of the United States and Canada. The right whale was friendly, slow swimming, floated when killed, and yielded lots of oil and baleen and whalers killed thousands of them. The population in the North Atlantic is the most endangered in the world.

Federally Endangered Whales That Migrate Past NJ
Whale, North Atlantic right**	Eubalaena glacialis**
Whale, blue**	Balaenoptera musculus**
Whale, fin**	Balaenoptera physalus**
Whale, humpback**	Megaptera novaeangliae**
Whale, sei**	Balaenoptera borealis**

Report Rare Wildlife Sightings in NJ

Pine snake in the sand of the Pinelands

This site gets mail almost every week from someone who spotted a bobcat, an eagle, an 8 foot pine snake or some other rare species somewhere in New Jersey.

The NJ DEP Endangered and Nongame Species Program actually has a report form for those rare wildlife sightings.

The information compiled by the Endangered and Nongame Species Program (ENSP) is a powerful conservation tool for land-users and natural area managers. With accurate information, conservation action can be focused on our most important natural areas.

If you have information on the location of a rare animal and would like to help us build the Natural Heritage inventory, please complete the form. This data helps develop critical habitat mapping and a look at habitat and population trends, and ultimately helps to develop conservation strategies for endangered and threatened species.

1. Fill out the sighting report form (There is also one for Marine Wildlife Sightings.)
2. Mark location of sighting on map
3. Mail or email completed survey

The term "Species of Special Concern" applies to species that warrant special attention because of some evidence of decline, inherent vulnerability to environmental deterioration, or habitat modification that would result in their becoming a Threatened species. This category would also be applied to species that meet the foregoing criteria and for which there is little understanding of their current population status in the state.


NJ Endangered and Threatened Species List
NJ Species of Special Concern
NJ Species Status Listing (Conserve Wildlife Foundation of NJ site)