August, 2004

Get Involved with the IBBA Program! (by Jennifer Mattice)

BIG NEWS – the much awaited New Jersey Important Bird and Birding Areas public nomination period is open!  Whether you’re an expert birder, an outdoor enthusiast, or simply someone who has an interest in preserving the natural wonders of our state, you are invited to participate in this new conservation initiative.  If you think that your favorite site may qualify for listing as an Important Bird Area (a site that provides essential habitat for birds and makes a contribution to the long-term viability of native bird populations in New Jersey) or an Important Birding Area (a site that is exceptional for birdwatching activities in New Jersey), please help protect the site by completing an online nomination form. 

IBBA nomination documents and program information, including instructions for completing nomination forms, site selection criteria, and additional resources are available on our IBBA Website.  The nomination period closes November 30, 2004 and we will begin announcing qualifying sites in early 2005.  If you have questions about New Jersey Audubon's IBBA Program, the nomination process, or you would like to volunteer, please contact Jennifer Mattice, IBBA Program Coordinator at (908)-766-5787.  We owe many thanks to Jim O’Malley, and Mike Lyncheski and Bob Riviera of the Harrier Group for creating our new online database and interactive nomination forms, and to Dimitri Kokkinos for continuing to volunteer his graphic design expertise.

We’ve also been busy securing grant funding to help make the program a success.  With a generous grant from the William Penn Foundation, we have hired a GIS Analyst to delineate sites and create maps, and greatly expanded our outreach and education efforts in South Jersey.  The Hyde and Watson Foundation has provided funds to purchase a cutting-edge GIS workstation including a large format plotter for creating color maps and posters.  A grant from The Trust for Public Land has helped to fund an IBBA Program kick-off event in September, to recognize the Barnegat Bay region for its importance to native bird populations and its exceptional birding opportunities.  Our public outreach campaign continues with multiple events, site nomination workshops, and presentations throughout New Jersey to introduce the program and to invite all of NJ to get involved.

Franklin Township (Somerset County) Stewardship Plan Unveiled (by Troy Ettel)

After nearly 12 months in development, the stewardship plans for the Negri-Nepote-Leni tract and the Griggs Park Greenway in Franklin Township, Somerset County, are complete.  This initiative represents the first partnership in New Jersey between a municipality and conservation group to manage town open space as natural areas.  This partnership brought together a progressive community with NJ Audubon’s expertise in managing sites for wildlife, plants and communities..  Hopefully, this can serve as a model for other communities who are wrestling with the question of how to manage natural areas statewide.  If you are interested in pursuing this model, please send an e-mail to conservation@njaudubon.org.

A good plan is based on a strong foundation of information.  Data provided by a dedicated core group of volunteers as well as NJAS staff were integral to the plans’ development.  A final draft was presented to the Open Space Advisory Committee (OSAC) in August of 2004 and formally approved at the September 21, 2004 OSAC meeting.  The plan details the protection, enhancement, and restoration of natural communities of the sites, with a large emphasis on the restoration of native grassland restoration. The two sites already harbor a number of grassland nesting birds listed as Threatened, Endangered, or In Need of Management in New Jersey including Eastern Meadowlark, Grasshopper Sparrow, American Kestrel, and Bobolink.  Grassland work conducted by Wade Wander in 1982 highlighted to regions importance to grassland species, which are the most imperiled group of nesting birds in NJ.  To view the natural area plans, visit www.njaudubon.org/conservation.

Mushett Family Foundation (by Troy Ettel)

The Mushett Family Foundation has generously renewed funding for the NJAS stewardship program. The Mushett grant has allowed NJAS to greatly expand its stewardship focus, to develop comprehensive stewardship plans on a number of sites, including the Franklin Township sites and two NJAS sanctuaries, the Plainsboro Preserve and Scherman-Hoffman Sanctuary.  The Mushett Foundation also helped launch a collaborative project with Merck that allowed NJAS to offer programming on the Merck campus and develop recommendations for habitat management on the Whitehouse Station campus. With funding from the Mushett Family Foundation, NJAS has also produced several documents promoting stewardship, including the April 2004 New Jersey Grassland Habitat Symposium and proceedings document and a stewardship brochure that seeks to make private landowners aware of potential funding opportunities.  To view copies of any of the stewardship plans or the private landowner brochure, go to www.njaudubon.org/conservation.

Clean Energy is Important to Meet Environmental Needs (by Ted Korth)

You know this: fossil fuel derived energy contributes to global warming and air pollution, causes local air quality problems (contaminant Hot Spots, asthma) and has many detrimental external effects (mountaintop removal mining, water quality impacts, transportation/spill concerns).  The impacts from fossil fuel consumption may be closer than you realize, for pollution is impacting our migratory bird species. 

"Neotropical migratory birds are important for our ecosystems.  They work as nature's pest controllers and pollinators and provide many hours of enjoyment for birdwatchers and outdoor enthusiasts. "  (Secretary Gail Norton; 6/9/04 USFWS press release).  Now NJAS has had a few disagreements with Secretary Norton's policies.  But on this point we agree – birds are part of a healthy ecological and social environment. 

But this important avian ecology is often correlated with seasonal change. Changes in weather mark the initiation of migration which is synchronized with the availability of food. As the temperature warms, plants flower, attracting insect prey for migratory birds. During the return migration, synchronicity with plant fruiting is important.  Disruption of either of these cycles could severely jeopardize bird migration.  Global warming threatens to create shifts in vegetative communities and regional climatic patterns which could greatly disrupt migratory birds if the plants they depend on for food become absent in a region, flower or fruit earlier or later due to climatic changes. 

To address the concern of fossil fuel impacts on our ecological community, NJAS is embarking on an initiative to help bring ecologically friendly wind power to New Jersey.  A major environmental concern with the locating and development of wind turbines or wind power farms it the impact the facilities may have on bird (and bat) populations. 

How much of an impact?  Recent information from U.S. projects indicate that bird mortality at wind turbine projects varies from less than one bird/turbine/year to as high as 7.5 birds/per turbine/year.  Though per-turbine mortality may seem low, the numbers can add up quickly.  Structure height, location, size, operational time and site layout at one, multi-turbine facility (the wrong facility in the exact wrong spot) could conspire to cause significant mortality.  One calculation for a proposed 180 turbine facility calculates a potential for 15,000 bird/bat kills per year at that site alone.  Add to this the cumulative effect on migrating populations as they moved across multiple wind farms, and population impacts become a real issue.

Development and implementation of wind-power facilitates has the potential to cause significant harm to avian species, and so to ecological systems in general ... but that impact might be avoided.  This will take effort on the part of government regulators, the wind industry and interested parties, but the need to make the effort is clear.  The increased use of clean energy is needed to protect the ecological health of our environment.  And it may be done in an ecologically safe manner.

Development and Growth

As our population continues to grow and our resources taxed, the tension between resource protection and consumption becomes more and more intense.  This August saw the passage of S1368, the state permit streamlining bill.    

NJAS strongly believes that proper development can and should be carried out in many areas of the state, and that this growth – this development and redevelopment - should be encouraged through many of the same mechanisms found in S1368.  Unfortunately, S1368 does not achieve a well planed, well considered or even sensible outcome.   S1368 misuses the state development plan to allow limited review of development projects.  The state plan was never intended to and does not comprehensively identify sensitive natural resource areas.  The goal of S1368 is entirely appropriate, but its mechanism to achieve that goal is flawed and opportunities for cost effective and needed resource protection are missed.

S1368 needs reform, and NJAS will advocate for reform.  In addition to reforming S1368, we will be addressing an underlying problem with the development patterns in the state.  Currently, our state development plan does not account for several significant land uses and resources which are critical to continued health of our environment.  By not taking into account groundwater recharge areas, wellhead protection areas, watersheds, and threatened and endangered species habitats, the existing state plan encourages land uses which will adversely affect our irreplaceable resources.

NJAS has mapped these natural resources and is petitioning to have the state plan amended to reflect existing critical resources – from habitat to threatened and endangered species to ground water recharge areas – so that these resources can be protected even during an expedited development review process.

Highlands Water Protection and Planning Act Signed Into Law

A round of applause is due to all the members who helped pass the Highlands Act.  It took over two decades of grassroots effort, 15 years of study and three gubernatorial panels, but now the Highlands area has gained legal protection.

The Highlands Water Protection and Planning Act will apply, to different degrees, to approximately 800,000 acres generally south-east of the ridge/valley area and north of the Sourlands.  There are two distinct areas within the 800,000 acres delineated by the act: the protection area (a/k/a “the core”) which contains approx 385,000 acres, and the planning area, which contains the balance.  The requirements of the act are mandatory in the core, and aspirational in the planning area. 

Briefly, the Highlands Act has two themes – a regulatory theme and a planning theme.  NJDEP is to create a suite of Highlands targeted regulatory initiatives which will be applicable in the core (300’ stream buffers, water quality, water diversion, septic density, flood areas, etc.).  Further, DEP will create a Highlands Review program to review development applications for compliance with these rules.  In essence, the Highlands permitting review program will create a streamlined system to general permit some land use activities and scrutinize others.  For planning, there will be a 15 member Highlands Council (and supporting staff) that will create a land use management plan for the Highlands Area, which is based on the DEP regulatory program.  This plan will use a carrying capacity analysis method to design the future use of land in the entire Highlands area.

 In the end, we should see a resource based land use plan that is applied through a focused oversight board and predetermined regulatory requirements.  Thus the Highlands will be the beginnings of melding resource driven regulatory initiatives and on the ground planning - more clarity, macro-scale resource protections, and functional regulatory program. 

What do we like about the Act?  The Act: 

1. Creates a capacity based land planning initiative that sees the land and water (and consequently habitat) as a continuing requirement of life and not merely as property to be used indiscriminately;

2. Gives protection to the resources in the core which will help limit (even reverse) habitat fragmentation in that area.  Thus in addition to protecting localized critical habitats, we will gain a good sized forest;

3. Packages several regulatory initiatives under one program, so we may begin to see movement away from cumbersome, self standing (dysfunctional) regulatory and land use programs towards ends driven regional plans; and,

4. Near and dear to NJAS – the permit review process requires that before any development is approved the DEP must find that the development will not i) jeopardize listed animals or plants, and ii) will not result in adverse modification of habitat for rare, threatened or endangered species.

There are many remaining questions which arise from implementation of the act, many of which will be addressed after creation of the Highlands Council and land use management plan.  Stay tuned. 

NJDOT, NJAS and NJDEP Celebrate Launching of Delaware Bayshore Birding and Wildlife Trail (by Lillian Armstrong)

On April 19, 2004, New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) Commissioner Jack Lettiere announced funding for the Delaware Bayshore Birding and Wildlife Trail at the New Jersey Audubon Society Center for Research and Education in Goshen.  Commissioner Lettiere was joined by representatives of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) and the New Jersey Office of Travel and Tourism, who partnered with NJAS in applying for the funding through the NJDOT’s Ecotourism Grant Program.  NJAS will coordinate the development of the project, which will connect important sites for viewing birds and other wildlife via existing roads and other transportation networks such as bike paths and mass transit.