NJAS Opinion: Winter, 1990

Present Status

New Jersey, with its key coastal position and five diverse physiographic regions, has a remarkably rich avifauna. Only Texas, California, and Florida have more species. Over 435 bird species have been recorded in New Jersey. Of these, some 349 are annual or nearly so. Of the 349 regularly occurring species, 201 nest in the state. About 75 species (game, threatened-endangered [T&E]) are receiving explicit management attention.

Notable among New Jersey's bird populations are the second largest concentration of migrant shorebirds in the U.S.; one million birds (most of the world's population of four sandpiper species) dependent upon the Delaware Bayshore in May; the largest hawk migration in North America (a quarter million raptors each fall); and the third largest colonial waterbird population (terns, gulls, herons) in the East. New Jersey's coastlines, rivers, and ridges concentrate birds in spectacular numbers in their northern and southern passage each spring and fall. Some 179 of our 201 nesting species are migratory.

Our major bird habitats (excluding the ocean) are wetlands (19 percent of our surface area), forests (44 percent of the state), and farmland/grassland (a declining percent of the remainder). After a protracted period of loss, especially from the 1950s to the 1970s, the passage of coastal and inland wetland protection laws has slowed but not stopped wetland loss. Forests are extensive, but only 17 percent are in federal or state ownership. Of the 83 percent in private and municipal ownership, about 83 percent are in tracts of 20 acres or more, which means that the forest conservation picture could change "overnight" so to speak. There is additional pressure now to develop forest lands because of the freshwater wetlands bill. Farmland/grassland acreage is expected to decline to 450,000 acres by the 1990s.

Bird Conservation Problems

Adequate quality bird habitat is not always a consideration in open-space acquisition, which is frequently controlled by what is cheap and available. In general, large contiguous tracts of wetlands or forests are better for resident species than fragments or small parcels. But small parcels of wetlands or forests in key migration corridors can be extremely important for migratory birds during passage. Tiffany Woods on the edge of Trenton and Hudson County Park in Bayonne are examples of small wooded areas (islands of green) important to migratory birds because of their location on migration corridors (rivers).

Loss of habitat, especially wetlands, and development impacts have been the major cause of bird decline in New Jersey. Half the Passaic wetlands have been lost in this century. Only one-third of the 22,000 acres of the Hackensack River marshes is still in wetlands and about half of the remaining 7,800 acres are under intense development pressure or impacts. About twenty-five percent of our salt marsh along the coast was lost between 1950 and 1975. Nearly one-half of our endangered, threatened, and declining birds are wetland dependent species. Reduction in size of any kind of habitat is a principal cause of bird decline because both diversity and abundance are in part functions of size. Forest interior species like ovenbird have been found to drop out of some forest tracts as large as 4,000 acres when the tracts became isolated from larger forested areas. The on-going decline of farmland/grassland acreage will cause continued decline in species like upland sandpiper, meadow-lark, bobolink, and vesper sparrow. Most of the state's endangered and threatened birds will continue to decline from habitat loss, except for those like osprey and least tern, which respond well to management programs.

Most of the state's species (250-275) are not receiving explicit funding for protection and research (exactly parallel to the national picture) because there is not an adequate mechanism for funding species other than game or T&E. Initiatives by the International Council for Bird Preservation and other national groups to get funding for migratory nongame bird research should be supported by key migratory bird states like New Jersey. A partial reason for inattention to migratory birds is that current research and management efforts tend to focus almost exclusively on resident species, not migrants. Another reason is that highly visible species like raptors and waterfowl get strong support, whereas perching birds get less support.

Management impacts on birds from various state and landowner practices are at times unresearched and unnoticed, and at times agency and landowner programs may conflict with each other. Some of these programs and practices include woodcutting in state parks, spraying, forest practices, water level regulation in impoundments, and mowing. Each of these practices has effects on birds which are not always noticed or researched and which may be either positive or negative. For instance a shelter cut in a forest may open up habitat for species not previously present (e.g.. red-headed woodpecker and bluebird in Lebanon State Forest), but thinning of forests in state parks or removal of understory may eliminate species dependent upon a dense shrub layer (certain warblers and thrushes). Maintenance of high water levels in impoundments during shorebird migration eliminates habitat for thirty plus species of shorebirds at a critical time in their passage when they need to refuel. Every agency and landowner is, wittingly or unwittingly, a wildlife and bird manager.

Migratory bird needs in particular are not always addressed by management programs for resident species, particularly certain single-species management practices. For example, in the recent twenty-year master plan for Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, there was a proposal to eliminate 700 to 1,000 acres of forest to create favorable habitat for woodcock. It is questionable that such a high percentage of the 6,000 acre wildlife refuge should be manipulated for a single species, especially when the whole picture is examined. Species not in trouble (like red-tailed hawk, blue-winged warbler, and pheasant) will benefit from this change, but a host of forest species including most warblers, vireos, flycatchers, cuckoos, tanagers, thrushes, woodpeckers, etc. (both residents and migrants, some sixty to seventy species in all) will be adversely affected. Forest tracts are at a premium in the northeast, and migratory bird refuges need to be conscious of providing habitat for forest migrants. The point is not that there can never be single-species management but that it has to be weighed against the needs of other species and balanced accordingly.

Recommendations

Land acquisition programs most beneficial to birds should be continued. These include adding marshland through the duck stamp program; adding federal wildlife refuge lands wherever possible, especially the proposed Cape May and Wallkill National Wildlife refuges; adding state wildlife management areas, and adding to parks and forests. Some of the best areas of abundance for breeding migratory species in the state are parks and forests; for example Allaire. Wawayanda and High Point state parks and Stokes and Lebanon state forests. Birds know nothing of agency jurisdictions. Adding on to existing parks, forests, and management areas is very beneficial because it increases the size of contiguous habitat tracts.

New acquisitions through a Green Acres bond issue should be aimed specifically at bird needs, both migratory and resident. One emphasis should be on LARGE FOREST TRACTS for forest interior species, especially since many municipally and privately owned forest tracts are large and could change quickly. Newark's Pequannock Watershed is perhaps the prime example. Some 20,000 acres of this 35,000-acre holding were found in a recent study to be "suitable for development." This is one of the most important tracts in the state for its breeding bird density and its abundance of migrants. The same can be said for the hardwood swamp forests of Cape May and Cumberland counties. Bear Swamp West, which is slated for acquisition in a bill currently in the legislature, is a critical addition.

Some Green Acres monies should be directed specifically at lands in important migratory bird corridors. In addition to the two just named, these include the Cape May Peninsula, the Sourlands, the northern ridges, Atlantic coastal tracts, and the Delaware Bayshore among others.

Strategies other than acquisition will have to be developed to assure the protection of substantial habitat tracts, since not all desirable habitats can be acquired. One promising tool may emerge from a court case (Koehler vs. Rockaway). Some forest lands could be given a farmland assessment as a means of encouraging conservation. This would complement state acquisition efforts and reduce the cost of habitat conservation.

Within the migratory bird corridors, local groups and environmental commissions need to be vigilant to inventory tracts in their towns which might be important for migratory birds. Streamside corridors for example are heavily used by migrating birds. Maintaining stream corridors is done by local vigilance. Developments can be arranged so as to leave intact the vegetation along stream corridors, so that passage birds will have feeding habitat.

A substantial funding source of several million dollars for nongame migratory bird research needs to be created at the federal level with matching money for the states. Such an initiative should he supported by New Jersey. Monies need to be spent on research and conservation of birds before they become endangered. In some ways we have been starting at the tail instead of at the head. We are currently spending most of our money on a few species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service needs to have its budget increased for this purpose. That will require some effort in Washington before appropriate congressional committees.

Another need is to research the impacts of current state and federal management programs on migratory birds. Refuges and management areas should have master plans which address the full spectrum of species using the tracts, not simply a few target species. Effects of game management techniques may be either positive or negative for nongame wildlife. In many Instances, management programs for both may be compatible, e.g., waterfowl and shorebirds.

Impoundments at state and federal refuges and management areas for shorebirds as well as waterfowl need to be managed. Some thirty species of shorebirds (sandpipers and plovers) use fresh-water impoundments in migration. In tracts with multiple impoundments, one can be flooded and another drawn down during shorebird migration periods (latter half of May and July-August-September). Several federal and state properties have ideal shorebird habitat: Forsythe, Manahawkin, Tuckahoe, Kingsland, and Heislerville. In the past when these impoundments were drawn down at the right time, they had excellent shorebird use. A model for shorebird management is the east pond at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge in New York City, managed by the National Park Service.

Census woodcuts in parks and forests before and after cutting to learn about changes in species composition. A few sample plots involving different kinds of cuts and habitats would yield a fund of predictive information useful for management decisions. The Lebanon Forest woodcuts are a prime example. After a certain shelter cut, red-headed woodpecker, a state-threatened species, moved into the shelter-cut plot. It might be useful to duplicate that elsewhere. If hard information is collected before and after cutting, then the gains and losses of species can be better evaluated.

Mass aerial spraying of the forest canopy or of wetlands should be avoided wherever possible at peak migratory periods and when young birds are being fed. The insecticides used for gypsy moth affect other leaf-eating caterpillars in the forest canopy at precisely the time in May when migration of forest insectivores like warblers is peaking.

Projections

Decline of wetland bird species may be reversed by recent laws protecting wetland habitat, if acquisition also continues. Laws can be changed and adjacent property development can affect preserved wetlands (e.g., Great Swamp). Certain wetland species like Forster's tern have increased dramatically in New Jersey in the seventies and eighties (on the order of 3,700 adult birds after being absent during the first half of the century). This was possible because of the wetlands law and because of habitat acquisition. Army Corps of Engineers and New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) permitting decisions will play a major role in the conservation of wetland species; the value of wetland dependent bird species like waterfowl, herons, shorebirds and some raptors needs to be factored into the judgments and evaluations that precede permitting decisions. For example, the North American Waterfowl Plan is an ambitious commitment of millions of dollars to the wetland resource. The importance of wetlands to that project will have to be kept in mind when permitting agencies decide whether a proposed development project in wetlands is in the public interest. Birds do have a dollar value!

Forest conservation will be the next major issue for bird and wildlife conservation in New Jersey. If large tracts are preserved in the Highlands and in Cape May-Cumberland in particular, then forest species will continue to survive. If forests become too fragmented from haphazard development and management, then our woodland bird species will decline. With respect to this problem, we need to think globally and act locally. These migratory bird species move between continents and countries. They can be affected at any point on their flight path by habitat loss. If forest preservation and regional planning are not forthcoming, our forest habitats will lose the capacity to hold forest species. Since contiguous forest tracts overlap political boundaries, it will be necessary for towns, counties, state agencies, and the adjacent state of New York as well as local citizen groups to unite in an effort to save our forests and thereby our forest birds.

Interagency cooperation within NJDEP will be key to the conservation of birds on public lands. Every park and forest should address bird conservation in its master plan, starting with a good inventory. If that is done, and management adapted accordingly, then nonwildlife jurisdictions can contribute to bird conservation.

Municipal and private landowner decisions will have a great deal to do with whether our migratory birds remain stable or decline. If more municipalities require wildlife inventories as a condition for large tract approvals, then more bird habitat can be added to the open-space inventory without buying land. The simple device of conforming a development proposal to the more and less valuable parts of a tract can conserve bird habitat if the information is available in advance. Environmental commissions will have to have more of a role in planning board decisions and more towns will have to require wildlife inventories if this method of bird conservation is to work. In most cases it will require a municipal ordinance.

Endangered and nongame species program efforts will result in stable populations of certain species like osprey, some colonial waterbirds (whose colonies have been fenced and monitored), and cliff swallow (whose numbers can be increased by the use of artificial nests). Bald eagle may also repopulate southern portions of the state, if additional habitat is preserved.

Farmland/grassland species will continue to decline with farmland acreage decline. Continued farming is the only viable management tool assuring long term success. If farming ceases, the grassland species will cease with it, except on airports and military properties and some large corporate lands. Military properties in the state should be inventoried to see what contribution these might make to bird conservation. Some have extensive grasslands, woodlands, and wetlands.

Richard Kane

Director of Conservation