Getting kids excited about a career in science is no walk in the park, but thanks to the Bayshore Adventure Program, it is a week at the marina.
Conserve Wildlife Foundation, the State Parks Department and the Leonardo State Marina held the Bayshore Adventure Program for 40 Monmouth County 8-11 year olds in August. The program gives kids the chance to peek into the lives of a variety of science based professionals through exciting, hands-on activities that foster exploration and discovery of the natural world.
Bayshore Adventure attendees with Conserve Wildlife Foundation and OceanFirst Foundation Staff(more…)
Asbury Park students and staff pose with their “talons up” after seeing an Osprey snatch a fish from the ocean.
Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey (CWF), the Asbury Park mayor’s office and public schools, and New Jersey Natural Gas hosted Wildlife Wednesdays Field Experience at North Beach at the end of July. The hands-on, project-based outing taught elementary school students about Asbury Park’s rare wildlife, and how to protect and preserve the environment the kids – and wildlife- call home.
Update May 30, 2019: Another example of the dangers of fishing (or this time crabbing) line unfolded in dramatic fashion in Tuckahoe Wildlife Management Area. CWF biologist Ben Wurst was called upon to put his climbing skills to the test to help an osprey dangling high above the ground. Thankfully Ben was able to get to the bird in time, and our friends at Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research nursed the osprey back to health and were able to re-release him near where he was found. Read more about the daring rescue on our Facebook page.
Ben Wurst puts his climbing skills to the test to rescue and entangled osprey
As thousands of people plan their trips to the Jersey shore for Memorial Day weekend, it is a good time think about how to help out shore and sea birds. Enjoy the holiday weekend!
The 141 miles of seashore in New Jersey are home – or at least part-time host – to many of the birds Conserve Wildlife Foundation protects and nurtures. Osprey, oystercatchers, black skimmers, piping plovers, red knots, and many others rely on a healthy coast to thrive.
Senior biologist for the Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey Todd Pover releases a piping plover, a species he has helped monitor for 25 years. (Jim Verhagen)
On October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy plowed ashore near Atlantic City, N.J., with sustained winds of 75 miles per hour. In its wake, state officials declared it the most destructive natural disaster in the history of New Jersey. It changed communities dramatically.
Natural features of the coastline underwent significant changes too, but in some cases, those changes presented new conservation opportunities that could protect people and wildlife in the face of future storms.
“We were able to identify places where piping plover habitat had been enhanced by the storm,” explained Todd Pover, a senior biologist for the Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey who has been involved in monitoring the federally threatened shorebird for 25 years. Places like Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, where the storm erased the dunes in a three-quarter mile stretch of beach, creating an open expanse from ocean to bay.
A new study investigates the habitat preferences of endangered Red Knots in their vast, remote Arctic breeding range. Credit: M. Peck for Phys.org
by The American Ornithological Society, via Phys.org
Rutgers University’s Richard Lathrop, Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey’s Larry Niles, and their colleagues attached radio tags to 365 knots captured while migrating through Delaware Bay in 1999-2006. To learn where and in what sort of habitat the tagged birds nested, they then conducted surveys via small airplane across the south and central Canadian Arctic, a vast study area spanning from Victoria Island in the west to Baffin Island in the east.
The study shows that there are more than 74,000 square kilometers of suitable rufa Red Knot habitat across their Central Arctic breeding range—enough space for at least that many breeding pairs, assuming one square kilometer of territory per nest.
