At the Crossroads: Habitat and Species Conservation in New Jersey in 2003

By:  Eric Stiles, Vice President for Conservation and Stewardship
        Alex Leeds, Policy Associate

Tom Gilmore, President of the New Jersey Audubon Society, recently observed, “Almost never, in all of my years, has there been so much public attention to, and promise for, the protection of New Jersey’s wildlife…  Almost never has there been so much at stake.”  This article provides an overview of local and state activity aimed at preserving habitat and protecting threatened and endangered species.

Habitat alteration and fragmentation takes an enormous toll on New Jersey’s wildlife, even as several species are making a recovery.  Ten percent of the state land sits under impervious cover like housing, cement, or asphalt, and 16,000 acres of haphazard development are added every year.  In only two decades, 40 percent of the bird habitat in the lower Cape May peninsula has been lost.  Since the passage of the New Jersey Endangered and Nongame Species Conservation Act (ENSCA), more than half of the state’s bog turtle habitat has been eliminated.

As most of ANJEC’s readership already knows, New Jersey citizens benefit from an enormous diversity of natural resources.  Despite its small size, the state is composed of six vastly different ecological regions.  Visitors to the Highlands Region, the Pine Barrens, and the coastal wetlands will be astounded by variation in geology and fauna.  This small state’s unique habitats maintain more recorded bird species than all but Texas, Florida, and California.

Saving New Jersey’s habitats and wildlife is not an option that can be weighed against other alternatives.  Municipalities that fail to proactively conserve their environmental resources create the foundations for ecological disaster and social poverty.  When forests are replaced with ill-planned housing, the water quality degrades, and, historically, humans and wildlife soon depart.  No one wants to live in a wasteland.  By comparison, many municipalities like Chatham Township in Morris County in the interior and Brick Township in Ocean County on the coast have used careful growth planning and watershed maintenance to become ecotourist attractions and coveted places to live.   

Habitat maintenance and wildlife conservation cost little in the long term.  They primarily require awareness and intelligent planning.  Fortunately, the resources for sound local planning have never been better.  The Landscape Project (www.state.nj.us/dep/fgw/ensphome.htm), which delineates critical, threatened, and endangered species habitat, provides a solid foundation for the integration of an environmental resource inventory with planning and zoning ordinances.  Organizations like ANJEC and the New Jersey Audubon Society will provide expert guidance and network with other organizations to consult for municipal level planning.  The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection is taking steps to support smart growth throughout the state.  (see the bottom of this article for a list of planning resources)

Activities at the state level closely complement local participation in habitat conservation.  When the New Jersey Endangered and Nongame Species Conservation Act (ENSCA) was passed in 1973, it was part of a body of highly progressive state and federal environmental legislation.  ENSCA’s special contribution to the new ecological paradigm of such federal contemporaries as the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Air Act was to prohibit harm to state-listed “threatened” or “endangered” species. 

In concert with the stellar work of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s Endangered and Nongame Species Program (ENSP), ENSCA has since had several well-publicized successes.   The number of Bald Eagle breeding pairs has risen from one to 37.  Peregrine Falcon breeding pairs went from zero to 14, meeting the federal species recovery goal.  The return of ospreys and great blue herons has been a triumph.  

But even the success of the Bald Eagle Management Project offers a cautionary tale.  Although the use of DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) was banned in the United States in 1972, its impact will linger for centuries.  From 1982 to 1989, ENSP biologists had to remove and artificially incubate DDT weakened Bald Eagle eggs from the state’s only long-term active nest.  Faced with young eagle mortality rates of over 75%, biologists introduced 60 eagles to the state over the course of an eight-year period. 

Today’s three dozen eagle breeding pairs was the result of considerable expense, care, persistence, and some force.  Yet, even now, PCB’s and development are a major threat to population recovery.  Dr. Larry Niles, Chief of the Endangered and Nongame Species Program, observes that “the bald eagle population is growing because we have a huge number of dedicated volunteers working with staff on the project.”  He notes that three out of four eagle nests have moved at least once because of development or disturbance interfering with the nesting area.  Thirty years after DDT, chemical pollution and habitat destruction still threaten progress.

Part of the reason ENSP devotes such attention to the recovery of individual species is that there are not many threatened or endangered species on the state list.  As of March 2002, the there were 48 species listed as endangered  (“whose prospects for survival in New Jersey are in immediate danger,” and who require “assistance… to prevent future extinction in New Jersey”).  These include everything from Sperm Whales to Arrogos Skippers (a species of butterfly), and from Bobcats to Piping Plovers and Brook Floaters (a species of mussels).  Even fewer species fall in the “threatened” category, defined as those species with the potential to become endangered.  

These small numbers belie the great diversity of New Jersey’s wildlife and habitat.  Originally, the process for placing species on the list was unscientific.  Popular species like the Peregrine Falcon received great attention, whereas species disliked or difficult to observe tended to be ignored.  In the 1990’s, New Jersey created a rigorous process for the identification of endangered species. 

Why expend the effort to save even the small number of listed threatened or endangered species?  First, it is considerably easier and less expensive to keep species within the state than it is to re-establish them, as the experience with Bald Eagles makes clear.   Second, each species functions as part of a practical balance with the other forms of life around it.  For an example of one obvious case, banished predators no longer hunt the state’s deer, and consequently, deer populations have grown out of control.  Dense populations reaching over 100 deer for every square mile devour New Jersey’s young forest growth.  In many regions, the deer keep forests from reproducing themselves as they age, with obviously devastating consequences.

Third, endangered species provide necessary measurements of the ecological health of a region.  If Bog Turtles decline, many other species reliant on wetland bog turtle habitat are unquestionably suffering losses as well.  However, regulations do need to devote more attention to the bulk of the state’s species.  Jane Galetto, chair of the New Jersey Endangered and Nongame Species Advisory Council, joins many conservationists in observing: “It is a sad commentary on New Jersey as a state that it does not devote resources [directly] for the management of the majority of the species.”  Part of the solution to this regulatory weakness is to finely tune protections for the characteristics of individual species.  Additionally, the public play a major role through the integration of habitat protection into growth plans.   

Initially, New Jersey’s protections did little to consider habitat.  Under ENSCA, the site of a nesting Cooper’s Hawk is protected only during the breeding season.  When the hawk returns to its nest next spring, it may well find that the site was converted into a gas station in its absence.  The state Freshwater Wetlands Protection Act (FWPA) of 1988 extended much-needed habitat consideration to the existing protections.  New Jersey wetlands with threatened or endangered species living in them now receive 150-foot buffers restricting significant invasions of the property. 

Two other zones are protected: the Pinelands and the coastal (CAFRA) zones.  The Pinelands Commission does an effective job promoting critical habitat protection.  Not all developments in costal zones require a CAFRA permit, resulting in inconsistent protection of those habitats.

To better inform conservation and planning, the Landscape Project represents a giant revolution in the process of identifying critical wildlife habitat.  Since 1994, ENSP has compiled extensive maps of land use and land cover, classifying all New Jersey property into 20 categories by examining units as well-defined as 0.5 acres.  The maps, accessible at www.state.nj.us/dep/gis/imapnj/imapnj.htm, are a must see for municipal planners.  Among other abilities, a map will show potential and occupied habitat for all rare, threatened, and endangered species in the state.  The maps should be used to prioritize open space acquisitions and to guide regulators and municipal planners.

This growing focus on habitat, however, has still not been transformed into necessary regulations.  ENSCA, FWPA, and protections for Pinelands, coastal and other regions do a very irregular job.  Unless a Red-Shouldered Hawk is nesting near freshwater wetlands, its nest stands a good chance of being eliminated by construction companies during the winter; a Bobcat in the Pinelands receives considerably greater protection than a Bobcat in northern New Jersey; and a Wood Turtle that wanders past the 150 foot wetlands buffer zone, as Wood Turtles often do, may find itself on a highway.

Governor James McGreevey and Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Brad Campbell have recently taken much needed steps toward solving these problems.   As a consequence of the high correlation between endangered species habitat and important New Jersey waterways, the currently proposed Stormwater Regulations show enormous promise.  The proposal to control water quality, water flow quantity, and groundwater recharge while providing 300-foot buffers for the most important (“category one”) waterways will protect thousands of acres of critical habitat due for development within the next fifteen years.

The McGreevey Administration is also working on smart growth procedures based on mapping areas for growth acceleration, maintenance, and prevention.  The so-called “Big Map” will integrate habitat protection and endangered species protection in a long overdue measure.  Nevertheless, the state as a whole is faced with intense development pressures as it approaches build out, the point where no remaining land is undeveloped or unprotected.  The final outcome of the proposed regulations will depend on how well they recognize the common interests humans and wildlife share in habitat preservation and habitat-growth integration.

Important Internet Sites:

www.state.nj.us/dep/gis/imapnj/imapnj.htm [Landscape Project maps]

http://crssa.rutgers.edu/projects/lc [urban development maps]

http://www.njstormwater.org [NJDEP’s stormwater site]

http://www.anjec.org [Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions]