Endangered Historic Sites in New Jersey: East Point Lighthouse

Besides the species that are threatened and endangered in New Jersey, there are also places that are threatened and endangered.

Founded in 1978, Preservation New Jersey is a statewide member-supported non-profit historic preservation organization. They publish the annual 10 Most Endangered Historic Places in order to draw attention to remarkable sites and to their many challenges.

The point of the list is to bring attention and therefore be a catalyst for positive solutions. Their program spotlights irreplaceable historic, architectural, cultural, and archaeological resources in New Jersey that are in imminent danger of being lost.

The list is generated from nominations by the public. Half of the sites on this year’s list are owned by the government and suffer from prolonged deferred maintenance, damage by forces of nature, and from a general lack of awareness or respect for the resource. Not surprisingly, insufficient financial resources are a major problem in saving these places.

One example from the 2019 list is the East Point Lighthouse in Maurice River Township (Cumberland County). This lighthouse sits on an outcropping of land where the Nationally-designated Wild and Scenic River system of the Maurice River enters the Delaware Bay in Cumberland County.

It was built in 1849 making it the second oldest existing lighthouse in New Jersey.

Despite a full restoration done in 2017 through the assistance of New Jersey Historic Trust and Federal Department of Transportation grant funds, this picturesque brick Cape Cod style lighthouse is considered far from safe and secure. The mouth of the Maurice River and the adjacent bayshore is rapidly eroding, and tidal waters erosion has already washed out the protective dunes. Stewards of the lighthouse are left with sandbag brigades in a futile attempt to hold back tidal waters and storm surge. Even with this effort, bay waters regularly lap at the front of the lighthouse and the basement fills with water.

Certainly, some of the erosion is the same as other water-adjacent historic resources around the world caused by climate change. 

The East Point Lighthouse is still being used as an active navigational aid and so should get a more immediate response than what has been proposed to date. The site is owned by the State of New Jersey who will hopefully act expediently in 2020 to protect this National and State Register listed site before the structure is gone forever.

Beaches on Delaware Bay Continue to Undergo Restoration

A continuing story in New Jersey since Hurricane Sandy has been the restoration of the beach area on Delaware Bay that are spawning grounds for horseshoe crabs and feeding areas for shorebirds.

It's a story worth retelling as these important populations of shorebirds and horseshoe crabs need the  protection that comes this year with the restoration of more beaches on New Jersey’s side of Delaware Bay.

Thompson’s Beach, on a remote stretch of the Cumberland County shore, will see the removal of  shattered bulkheads and the replacement of 40,000 cubic yards of sand for the spawning of thousands of horseshoe crabs.

Four more beaches and a marsh are due for restoration over the next two years in a federally funded $5.1 million operation on behalf of the American Littoral Society and the Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey.

A ban on horseshoe-crab harvesting on New Jersey beaches has shown an increase in the bay’s population of red knots. But the crabs are still taken for medical uses and as bait and are harvested on Maryland and Virginia shores even though they are part of the Delaware Bay population.


The red knot migrates from southern Argentina to Arctic Canada via the Delaware Bay beaches each spring and relies on horseshoe crab eggs for food to fuel that journey. The bird population was at its lowest in the early 2000s and has recently stabilized at about 25,000.

That is encouraging, but it is less than a third of the 80,000 birds that biologists consider sustainable, and well below its peak of about 92,000 in the 1980s. The red knot was recently listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act,.

Other shorebirds that use the bay beaches have also suffered a sharp decline and may be more endangered than the red know. For example, the ruddy turnstone's numbers are down to 14,000 from some 150,000 during the 1980s.

Larry Niles, a consulting biologist who designs and manages the beach-restoration program and who previously headed the endangered species program at New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection, estimates that some 500,000 male crabs and 150,000 females are harvested each year for their blood, which contains LAL, an extract used to ensure that medical products such as intravenous drugs and vaccines are free of contamination. The crabs are bled and then returned to the ocean in an operation that may kill as many as half of them, he said.

The medical harvest has cut the number of females to about 4 million from about 12 million in the 1990s, he said. “There’s no evidence of recovery in the crab population,” he said. “We’re not going to increase the bird population until the crab numbers start increasing.”

Jersey Caviar

Sturgeon docks at Caviar/Bayside. Rutgers Collection, ca. 1930.

You probably associate caviar, salted sturgeon eggs, as a delicacy from Russia. It was the "treat of the tsars." But New Jerseyans may be surprised that our state was once famous for its own caviar.

If we go back to the late 1800s, the Delaware Bay and Delaware River were one of the most productive sturgeon fisheries, helping make the United States the world's top caviar exporter.

At the mouth of the Stow Creek in Cumberland County, was a place known as known as Caviar (or Caviar Point) that had a processing plant and railroad spur for sending the caviar north through the Pine Barrens to New York City. During the fishing season, approximately 400 fishermen lived in the nearby cabins and houseboats, with access only to a store, post office, and train station.

Atlantic sturgeon, a bony, prehistoric-looking fish, were placed on the federal endangered species list and NJDEP monitors migration patterns in our waters. But back in 1895, they were shipping 15 train cars of caviar and smoked sturgeon every day out of NJ.

Despite Atlantic sturgeon being plentiful, between the females that were slaughtered to extract the eggs, increasing demand on a slow-maturing species and overfishing, the fishery and the caviar business crashed in the early 1900s. A sturgeon can live until it is over 60 years old and they breed anywhere from once a year to once every 5 years.

The town of Caviar became known as Bayside and caviar disappeared from New Jersey's industries.

But Atlantic sturgeon were not eliminated from the Delaware. Although the estimated 300 to 500 adult females that spawn there is a very "endangered" population when compared to the estimated 180,000 breeding sturgeon believed to be in the bay prior to 1890.

Successful Comeback for Bald Eagle in New Jersey

Most experts expected the bald eagle to become extinct during the 20th century.

This American symbol has since reversed its decline and begun to recover.

The bald eagle was found to be endangered in 1940 and a law was passed, the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, to protect it from hunting.

DDT offered another threat to the survival of the bald eagle, and continued to feed the decline in numbers after the birds were no longer hunted. When the number reached just 417 breeding pairs in 1963, action was called for and in 1973 the species was put on the newly created Endangered Species List.

The bald eagle is making a strong comeback in the state of New Jersey. Zoologists from the Endangered and Nongame Species Programs (ENSP) locate and monitor eagle nests and territories to determine the species health and population.

Bald eagle numbers in New Jersey are increasing due to the efforts of volunteers who monitor bald eagle nests and report critical data concerning incubation, hatching and fledging dates to DEP wildlife biologists. Along with monitoring the nests, volunteers report new eagle sightings that often lead to the discovery of additional nests.

Despite its continued endangered status, the bald eagle is one of New Jersey's great success stories in endangered species protection and management.

The rising trend in eagle numbers began in the early 1980s. Eagle numbers have not only been increasing in New Jersey, but throughout the Northeast and lower 48 states. Fewer than 10 bald eagles were observed in the state's initial annual survey in 1978 as extensive pesticide use in the mid-1900's decimated the eagle population.

Beginning in 1982, the Department's Division of Fish and Wildlife engaged in a comprehensive strategy to address the situation by acquiring 60 bald eagles from Canada to form the nucleus of a new breeding population.

There are approximately 40 volunteers who assist DEP wildlife biologists by monitoring bald eagle nests from the beginning of the nesting season in December until the young birds take their first flight in late summer. Volunteers provide further protection to the bald eagle by alerting the Department when they witness snowmobiles, ATV's or people walking too close to a bald eagle nesting location. Often volunteers act as educators, informing the public that walking too close to a nesting eagle pair can cause the birds to abandon their nest.



A new record high of 69 eagle pairs was monitored during the 2008 nesting season. 63 of those were active (with eggs) and one was housekeeping. Five other pairs were seen in and around previous nest territories, but it was unknown if and where they nested.

New Jersey’s Delaware Bay region remained the state’s eagle stronghold, with 46 percent of all nests located in Cumberland and Salem counties. Seven new nests were found this season, three in the south, two in central and two in northern NJ. Fifty nests were successful in producing 85 young, for a productivity rate of 1.35 young per active nest.

In January’s Midwinter Eagle Survey, ENSP staff, regional coordinators and
volunteers reported a total of 264 bald eagles, a new record high count. Forty-three eagles were recorded in northern NJ and 221 in the south.

• Video on eagles in NJ
• NJDEP Eagle Fact Sheet (pdf)
• 2008 Eagle Report (pdf)