Wildlife Preservation Club members build bat houses for NJ bats
by Maria Grace, Education & Outreach Manager
On Tuesday, December 14th, I had the pleasure of working with over 60 middle school students from 2 Union Township (Union County) schools, Burnet Middle School and Kawameeh Middle School. Larry Petras, Advisor of the club, received a grant to educate the club members about bats and build and install bat houses around the township. Mr. Petras reached out to Conserve Wildlife Foundation to help fulfill his and his students wishes of improving bat habitat throughout their community. So with wood, caulk, screws, and power drills in tow, I arrived at Burnet Middle School to assist the students in building bat houses that will be placed around the township to bolster the bat population.
First, I gave a presentation about bats – their natural history, habitat requirements, and importance to the environment. Afterwards, the over 60 students were broken into groups and given the task of building 3 chambered maternity bat houses, capable of holding of approximately 80 bats.
I have run many bat house building workshops over the last couple of years and I always describe the scene as “controlled chaos.” Enthusiastic kids with power tools, staple guns, and caulking guns, can make any educator a bit tense. And to top it all off, this group was the largest group that I had ever done a bat house buildilng workshop for – over 60 middle schoolers! (we usually top out at about 25 students for building 5 bat houses.) But Mr.Petras assured me that the students would be well-behaved and respectful of the work that would be completed.
The kids moved through the task with shining colors – I was so completely impressed with how the students worked together and allowed each other to help build the houses. They made sure everyone had a turn working with the tools. Those that knew how to use a caulking gun or a power drill, taught those who did not. The satisfaction of building something from a pile of wood was evident in the buzz that hummed throughout the room.
The end result was 5 bat houses capable of holding 400 or more bats. With plans to build more bat houses, Mr. Petras and his students are well on their way to doing their part to conserve wildlife in their community.
To Mr. Petras and his students, thank you for wanting to help protect New Jersey’s imperiled wildlife. It is inspiring to see such enthusiasm and dedication in a group of young people. I hope you enjoyed the project as much as I did.
Nominations for this year’s Women and Wildlife Awards
Since the first Women and Wildlife Awards in 2006, we have had the distinct honor of highlighting and celebrating the work of twelve women who dedicated their professional or volunteer lives to the protection of wildlife populations and their habitats in New Jersey. Here’s a snapshot of the women we’ve honored and the work they’ve done.
Joanna Burger holds a great egret.
Hannah Bonsey Suthers and Joanna Burger were first honored in 2006. Hannah has spent more than 28 years studying bird populations and the habitats that support them through the Bird Banding and Research Station that she founded on the Sourland Ridge in central New Jersey in fields undergoing succession from farmland to natural state. Joanna has been a Professor of Ecology and Evolution at Rutgers University for 25 years. For 14 of these years, she was Director of the Graduate School in Ecology and Evolution. The main focus of Joanna’s research has been to understand how animals can prosper in habitats affected or dominated by people, and their interactions with other animals.
Kathy Clark and Amy S. Greene were honored in 2007. Kathy is a zoologist with the state’s Endangered and Nongame Species Program. Kathy has been instrumental in the recovery of the bald eagle in the state since the early 1980’s and in re-establishing a stable breeding population of peregrines in New Jersey. She also leads the osprey project which has recovered the state’s osprey population to record high numbers. Amy is president and owner of Amy S. Greene Environmental Consultants, Inc. She has over 30 years of experience in the environmental field and is recognized as an expert in the field of wetland science, environmental permitting, natural resources inventory, terrestrial and aquatic ecological studies including endangered and threatened species surveys.
Dianne Nickerson holds a peregrine falcon.
In 2008, Barbara Brummer and Dianne Nickerson were honored. Barbara is the New Jersey State Director of the Nature Conservancy, she is dedicated to protecting our natural resources. But, despite a career in the corporate sector and the demands of raising a family, she carved out the time to devote to learning about (nine years of night school in pursuit of her Ph.D.), teaching about (many semesters teaching field biology at Montclair State and New York University) and sharing her passion for wildlife and nature. Diane is the Director of Mercer County Wildlife Center she has grown the center from a small volunteer based organization to one of the most highly respected wildlife rehabilitation programs in the state. She is highly regarded as a wildlife rehabilitation professional. She cares very deeply about New Jersey’s wildlife populations and for our natural environment
Jane Morton Galetto and Amanda Dey were honored in 2009. Jane is the founder and President of Citizens United to Protect the Maurice River and Its Tributaries (CU), Jane was instrumental in the designation of the Maurice, Manumuskin, Menantico, and Muskee Rivers into the National Wild and Scenic River System. Amanda is a biologist with the Endangered and Nongame Species Program. She has worked on a variety of projects involving shorebirds, goldenwing warblers, power line rights of way, and statewide surveys of grassland and forest passerines but her landscape studies with neotropical migrants and her work with shorebirds are outstanding.
2010 Women and Wildlife Award recipient Annette Scherer.
Earlier this year, Annette Scherer and Marie Springer were honored. Annette successfully worked with Federal, State and non-governmental agencies in developing and implementing efforts to protect endangered and at-risk wildlife over a twenty-eight year career with the US Fish and Wildlife Service. She has been particularly instrumental in the protection of New Jersey’s beach-nesting bird populations, including piping plovers, American oystercatchers, skimmers and terns. Marie has worked tirelessly to protect and expand the Wallkill National Wildlife Refuge and to educate the public about its diverse wildlife. Her efforts on behalf of the state’s population of bats were instrumental in obtaining $1.9 million for research and prevention of white nose syndrome, a disease that is decimating the bat population in the north east.
A posthumous award was presented by Mike Daveport to honor Dr. Carol Slocum.
We have honored two women wildlife professionals who left us far too early but whose work and dedication to their science made them obvious candidates for inclusion into this exclusive group of women.
Most recently we honored Dr. Carol Slocum, New Jersey’s leading expert on seal behavior and ecology. Dr. Slocum gave 30 years to the service of science and wildlife conservation. She played a vital role in identifying threats to marine mammals within New Jersey as well as recommending potential strategies for addressing those threats. When she passed away in 2010, we were honored to be asked by her colleagues to present this posthumous award to her family. Read more about this posthumous award.
In 2008, we honored Stacy Hagan of Rutgers University Marine Station. Starting as a volunteer at the Marine Station, Stacy eventually became a fulltime employee while also completing a M.S. in the Graduate Program of Ecology and Evolution at Rutgers University. During her short career she was senior author or co-author on 17 peer-reviewed publications.
Women and Wildlife 2011
If you know anyone, professional or volunteer, who can stand next to the wonderful women and their achievements outlined above, please submit a nomination by January 21, 2010.
Also, if you would like to celebrate Women in Wildlife during national Women’s History Month in March, please join us on March 27th at Prallsville Mill in Stockton, New Jersey.
Last week, a park in Hillsborough Township got a makeover. Following “a shave and a haircut,” more than seven acres of fallow farmland were planted with 1,500 native trees and shrubs.
This afforestation is the latest partnership between Hillsborough and the Conserve Wildlife Foundation to improve wildlife habitat on township-owned lands. The park (on Wertsville Road between Montgomery & Long Hill Rds) sits on the northern edge of the Sourland Mountains, which hold significant values to forest wildlife, migratory songbirds, human residents and recreationists. Our project will extend this forest cover and all of its benefits.
While the trees are in the ground, this project is still “in progress.” The next step is to install temporary fencing to protect the saplings from deer browse. We’ll also have to fight the invasive plants – like autumn olive and multiflora rose – that grew so heartily at the site before. And lastly, we still have 150 trees and shrubs to plant at the neighboring Otto’s Farm Park. Please contact me (908-782-4614 x 104) if you want to help!
The Allegheny woodrat is a state endangered species. It was added to the endangered species list in 1991. There is one remaining population of these small mammals left in the state and they need our help this winter.
This season we are going to help the woodrat by providing it with food. We will distribute acorns, beech nuts, hickory nuts or any other nuts from native New Jersey trees in the area the woodrats live. By providing them with food we will help them survive the winter.
Collecting nuts while learning about the habits and habitat needs of the Allegheny woodrat is a great service learning project! Have your students collect native tree nuts throughout the community and help to protect one of NJ’s rarest wildlife residents.
We are collecting nuts now through November 24th to distribute to the woodrat’s location throughout the winter. If you would like to contribute to the woodrat’s winter food pantry, please drop off nuts from native New Jersey trees to the Endangered and Nongame Species Program’s office in Clinton, New Jersey.
Please contact Maria Grace at Conserve Wildlife Foundation at (609) 984-0621 for specific instructions.
Bats get a bad rap – they are blind bloodsuckers that get caught in our hair. But these are all myths and this post is going to bust them!
There are no bloodsucking bats in the U.S. Yes, there are vampire bats in the world (3 species live in the tropics from Mexico to Brazil, Chile, and Argentina) and while they do rely on blood for their sustenance, they don’t view people as a food source. They usually pierce the skin of livestock such as cows, goats or chickens, and gently lap the blood from the wound (similar to how a dog licks water from a bowl).
Bats are not blind. Most species of bats have very good eyesight but they usually depend on their sense of echolocation to navigate through the world. They emit high frequency sounds into their environment and these sounds bounce off objects and back to the bat. The bat is then able to interpret the sounds and create a picture of what their environment looks like.
Bats rarely get caught in human hair. Bats, using their sense of echolocation, can detect objects as fine as a single human hair in total darkness. They are not aggressive animals but they can fly too close to people while feeding on insects or when flying low over water to take a drink.
Beneficial bats eat bugs. Bats are incredible animals and do a lot for us. All nine species of bats found in New Jersey eat insects, consuming one-third of their weight in bugs each night. Bats play essential roles in keeping populations of night-flying insects in balance. Just one bat can catch hundreds of insects in an hour, and large colonies catch tons of insects nightly, including beetles and moths that cost American farmers and foresters billions of dollars annually, not to mention mosquitoes in our backyards.
Bats play a key role in pollination. In other areas of the world, bats are the primary pollinators for many desert plants like the saguaro and organ pipe cactus as well as many species of agave. Bats also help in the pollination of fruits and veggies like bananas, avocados, coconuts, vanilla, dates, and mangoes.
Bats also help in seed dispersal. In fact, seeds dropped by bats can account for up to 95 percent of forest regrowth on cleared land. Bats spread the seeds of almonds, cashews, and chocolate. Did you read that? CHOCOLATE! Bats help us to have more cacao trees, which produces the yummy main ingredient of our favorite Halloween treats!
So instead of screaming and freaking out if and when you see a bat, why don’t you stop and appreciate it and maybe say a little “thank you” for all the wonderful benefits they provide to us. Halloween wouldn’t be the same without bats and the delicious m&m’s, snickers, and Almond joys are made possible because of the wonderful, now better understood, bats of the world.
Enter the 2011 Species on the Edge Art & Essay Contest!
by Maria Grace, Education & Outreach Manager
Open to all 5th graders throughout New Jersey, the very popular Species on the Edge Art & Essay Contest encourages students to think about rare wildlife in New Jersey, not just on television.
To enter the contest, students research a species of wildlife that is rare or endangered in New Jersey. They write an essay detailing the needs of the species and the challenges to its future existence. They then create artwork – a painting or collage – depicting their chosen animal in its natural habitat.
Over the past 8 years, almost 20,000 students have entered the contest and have expanded their knowledge about New Jersey’s imperiled wildlife. Hundreds of teachers throughout the state have participated in the contest and have praised its interdisciplinary approach and its ability to create a deep appreciation for nature:
“My students love the Species on the Edge Contest because they enjoy learning about the many endangered animals in New Jersey, which fits into our curriculum. The contest helps raise their awareness about how humans interact with the natural world. My students take ownership of one species, and through artwork and research, they express their concerns about the environment and how to protect it.”
–Mary Keyser, Maple Road School, West Milford, NJ
A winner is chosen from each county in NJ, 21 winners in all. The winning artwork and essays become part of a statewide traveling exhibit, helping to raise awareness for New Jersey’s endangered wildlife. Finally, the winning entries are published in a beautiful, colorful calendar to help inspire people to conserve wildlife throughout the year!
2011 Species on the Edge Calendar
The contest is free and it’s easy to participate! Download your contest kit today from our website. The kit contains everything you need to participate – lesson plans, entry forms, and a list of approved resources for research.
The 2011 Species on the Edge Calendar is now available in our store for only $8. It makes a great gift for friends, family, and co-workers. Get your copy today!
Species diversity is critical for the continued health of any ecosystem. All organisms have a role to play, but defining that role for any species is no easy task. Certain species might act as a keystone, one whose healthy presence is absolutely required. Others might serve the role of an indicator species, the proverbial canary in the coal mine, with the health of that species being a sign of the health of the overall system. Without data, we cannot know. While data has been collected for several years for breeding and wintering populations of American Oystercatcher in New Jersey, very little data has been collected during migration. Collecting that data is my job at the moment.
The American oystercatcher is a species of special concern in the state of New Jersey. Causes for concern include their low population and risky breeding strategy, combined with habitat degradation from pollution, habitat loss from development, as well as increased predation and disturbance directly related to human activities within their habitat.
Although oystercatcher pairs will fiercely defend a territory from other oystercatchers during nesting season, in the fall and early winter they are almost always to be found hanging out together either at the beach or on the marsh. They can generally be relied on during the non-breeding season to roost in flocks near ocean inlets, but locating the flock and approaching to within band-resighting distance during a limited high-tide time frame can be challenging.
An ocean inlet can encompass a very large area; and when your quarry can fly and you can’t, that area can seem even larger! Just finding the flock and getting to an effective observation point (which even with quality optics is surprisingly close) without them “spooking” is more than half the battle. Using a boat or kayak, combined with marsh trekking and the occasional swim, there are few places the oystercatchers go where they cannot be followed and discretely observed.
The goal of this field research is to collect data on roosting flocks of American oystercatchers at southern New Jersey Atlantic coastal inlets during migratory season. The data collected also enables further research on life-span, survival rates, movement patterns, population, age structure and other important characteristics.
I’m incredibly fortunate to be a part of this important research collecting data vital to our understanding of this species, while at the same time being privileged to be able to enjoy and become more intimately familiar with our beautiful southern New Jersey coastal ecosystem. We would like to thank the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation for funding this important research.
As the Barnegat Bay Birder-in-Residence for CWF of NJ I led a total of 4 Bird Walks and 4 Birding by Kayak Tours in Island Beach State Park. It was very successful with a total of 60 people attending the Birding by Kayak trips and a total of 34 participants for my bi-weekly bird walks. There were many repeat customers, mostly from participants that enjoyed the Birding by Kayak trips so much so they wanted to attend my bird walks too. The participants ranged from beginners to excellent and avid birdwatchers. So it was a nice mix of skill levels of bird identification abilities on the trips. The Birding by Kayak tours were sponsored by the Friends of Island Beach State Park, so they advertised those tours via the IBSP Visitor Guide. As for my bird walks I advertised them by printing out flyers and distributing them to local businesses like Big Ed’s produce, Lavallette Post Office, Wild Birds Unlimited and Cattus Island County Park. Also Pete Bacinski of Sandy Hook posted my walks in the Rare Bird Alerts which is posted on the JerseyBirds forum. And of course, they were posted on CWF’s Calendar of Events.
The tours were extremely successful in seeing all of the common birds of the Barnegat Bay area as well as numerous uncommon to rare sightings. Each kayak tour gave participants the chance to see and compare all the herons and egrets that inhabit the saltmarshes of Barnegat Bay. Each tour there were juvenile Little Blue Herons, which are all white, and the later tours had Black-crowned Night Herons. More than once we got to see beautiful and not too common shorebirds like Whimbrels and Marbled Godwits along with the much more common sandpipers and plovers. Other great shorebirds seen on the BBK trips were Pectoral Sandpipers and a Solitary Sandpiper. We even had a Caspian Tern amongst the Royal Terns. It seems that Ospreys were even more abundant this year than last year, with plenty of hatch year juveniles around in late July and August. Also, American Oystercatchers seemed unusually abundant this year.
The bird walks also produced some exciting and uncommon birds. Least Terns seemed to be in pretty high numbers in August. Also we had multiple Black Tern sightings in and around the inlet area. One of the best finds was a group of 8 Common Eiders that decided not to migrate to their arctic breeding grounds and just stay in Island Beach for the summer. We also had 1 single Piping Plover feeding amongst the Sanderlings and Semipalmated Plovers on the shoreline. That was only the second Piping Plover I have ever seen at IBSP in my life. So all in all, it was a very successful season with very successful tours and each participant walked away with a greater appreciation of the magnificent birdlife that relies on the Barnegat Bay area for their survival.
Kids spend a week exploring the natural wonders of Barnegat Bay.
By Maria Grace, Education & Outreach Manager
Earlier this month, 14 kids from across the state, got to spend the week in Barnegat Bay. They were the first participants in the Sedge Island Summer Field Experience, a week long immersion that took place at the Sedge Island Natural Resource Education Center, a facility run by the NJ Division of Fish & Wildlife within the Sedge Island Marine Conservation Zone.
Participants from the first Sedge Island Summer Field Experience.
This outstanding group of kids spent time clamming, kayaking, bird watching, fishing, fish tagging and even saw diamondback terrapins hatching. Each day a different activity was organized by our friends and partners in the conservation community and each night, the group reflected on their activities by writing in journals provided especially for this experience. These kids were privileged to learn from the experts – biologists and environmental specialists who work on various topics like shellfish restoration, bird and terrapin conservation, to oceanography.
On the last day of the experience, the kids welcomed their families to the island and the kids taught their parents about Barnegat Bay and its natural wonders. All involved considered this pilot program to be a great success that will be duplicated in future years. If you are interested in applying to attend future Sedge Island Summer Field Experiences, please email maria.grace@conservewildlifenj.org.
Well as summer’s end slowly draws near, the beach nesting bird season has wrapped up on Stone Harbor Point. All of the Piping Plover and American Oystercatcher chicks have fledged (i.e. reached the stage where they can fly). In the past, this has often been a very depressing time. Stone Harbor Point has a bad history of flooding, and many of the nests and chicks were destroyed; some years we only had a couple of chicks fledge. This year, however, there is good news! A total of 13 Piping Plover chicks and 10 Oystercatcher chicks have fledged, from 9 and 21 breeding pairs, respectively! I owe this very successful year to the weather cooperating during the high spring tides; flooding was not a big issue this summer. I also owe my thanks to the public for respecting the rules and staying out of the fenced areas, giving these beach nesting birds the room to successfully fledge their chicks.
This breeding season sure has had its ups and downs. One low point that comes to mind is finding Oystercatcher nest after nest washed away from a high tide the night before (most of them luckily renested). One of the greatest feelings is finding a chick on its fledge date, knowing that it now has a much greater chance of survival. We also had a Least Tern colony on Stone Harbor Point that fledged a good amount of chicks.
Our focus now has shifted to migration. Thousands of migratory shorebirds are now congregating on Stone Harbor Point. Most are on their way south from breeding up north in Canada and the Arctic. Oystercatchers and Piping Plovers are also preparing to head south for the winter. They are currently gathering in huge roosting flocks before their departure. This gives us ample opportunity for band resighting and to conduct surveys, estimating the population sizes of these shorebirds.
Since the season is just about over it means my job (as Seasonal Steward) is just about over. Words can’t describe how much I love this job and what I have learned over the last four months. The Conserve Wildlife Foundation of NJ is truly making the difference for wildlife all over the state, and I’m glad I got to be a part of it!
Open to all 5th graders throughout New Jersey, the very popular Species on the Edge Art & Essay
