Bobcats are New Jersey’s last remaining wild cats. Once nearly extinct in our state, they are still endangered here, but making a comeback. The key to their success is habitat.
The Nature Conservancy is working to protect critical habitat for these beautiful cats in New Jersey. They call it "Bobcat Alley," and it's a place created by connecting preserved land between two great mountain ranges: the Appalachians and the Highlands.
The Bobcat Alley wildlife corridor will provide space for bobcats to hunt, raise young here and flourish.
This month I saw a few unusual New Jersey animal sighting stories in the news. One was a "mystery animal" sighting in Ewing Township that was probably a fox that has shed its fur. Another was a news story about a bobcat that entered a house in Washington Township.
Bobcats typically avoid humans, so the incident is unusual. But bobcat sightings and encounters are on the rise in NJ. Later, in another part of the township, a bobcat attacked and injured a dog, and then a half hour later, police received a call that the bobcat was in a nearby barn.
Conservation officers snared the animal because they believed it was showing possible early signs of having rabies and it was removed by the Division of Fish and Wildlife for observation and possible testing.
Native New Jersey bobcats were almost extinct in New Jersey in the 1970s, but thanks to ongoing conservation efforts have been making a slow comeback.
Bobcats roam an average of seven miles a day, so they require lots of land. Car strike deaths is the leading cause of bobcat mortality in the state.
Having connected wild habitat for them is the best situation for them and would decrease their entry into populated areas, but that is a difficult task to accomplish in our densely populated state. The Nature Conservancy in New Jersey is working to protect "Bobcat Alley," a 32,000-acre corridor of connected and protected habitat in northwestern New Jersey.
Connecting Habitat Across New Jersey (CHANJ) is a statewide effort to make our landscape and roadways more permeable to wildlife movement.
Whether they’re small like a salamander or big and wide-roaming like a bear, animals need to be able to move through the landscape to find food, shelter, mates, and other resources. Without that ability to move, healthy populations simply will not persist over the long term. Here in New Jersey, wildlife are up against steady urbanization, a dense network of roads, and now a changing climate, all of which put the connectedness of our habitats and wildlife populations in jeopardy.
At Waterloo Road in Byram, more than 300 salamanders and frogs per hour have been tallied crossing a quarter-mile stretch on peak migration nights. Their goal is to reach the vernal pool on the other side, lay eggs, and journey back to the forest again. The tiny migrants are up against about 50 vehicles per hour or more - grim odds given that just 15 cars per hour can kill more than 50% of all amphibians trying to cross a road. Even with rescue teams patrolling Waterloo on foot, roadkill rates are always over 10% (Hall and Triece 2012-2017). For Spotted Salamanders, annual road mortality of more than 10% can lead to local extirpation (Gibbs and Shriver 2005).
