Official Site of The State of New Jersey
Connecting Habitat Across New Jersey depends on many different people, organizations and agencies acting to protect and manage the various pieces of our state’s habitat connectivity puzzle. Here are some ways you can be part of the CHANJ:
Residents:
Backyards – Add more native plants and trees to your home landscape. Even small spaces count! Visit sites like Jersey-Friendly Yards , Homegrown National Park , and NJDEP Fish & Wildlife’s Backyard Habitats page for inspiration.
Larger lands – See how your property or farm “connects” to the CHANJ Mapping . Lands within CHANJ-mapped Cores and Corridors are especially important for wildlife movement, so setting aside space for habitat in those areas is a great way to boost your connectivity value.
Maybe even consider a conservation easement, or eventually preserving your lot for nature. Our CHANJ Guidance Document (Chapter 4 ) has a list of land preservation contacts.
Streamside – Create and maintain wide natural buffers around streams, since riparian corridors are critical for wildlife movement (notice that many CHANJ corridors follow waterways). Funding may be available through a local watershed association or USDA office; our CHANJ Guidance Document (Chapter 4 ) lists some habitat restoration contacts.
Get involved – See how your town intersects with the CHANJ Mapping , and encourage your local government to consider habitat connectivity in their master plans and land use decision-making. Our CHANJ Guidance Document can help them through the process. The Center for Large Landscape Conservation has an excellent guide, called “Integrating Wildlife Habitat Connectivity Into Local Government Planning .”
Report wildlife – Use NJ Wildlife Tracker to report sightings of rare wildlife species, or wildlife (of any kind) on roadways. These sightings can help us pinpoint roadkill hotspots as well as areas where threatened or endangered land animals are active, which can lead to wildlife road-crossing enhancement projects.
Local Governments and Organizations:
Preserve CHANJ parcels – Permanently protecting habitat through land acquisition or easement is essential to securing connectivity for wildlife. Our CHANJ Mapping shows which parcels intersect CHANJ Cores and Corridors, to help focus land preservation efforts on these important areas. NJDEP’s Green Acres Program, various land trusts and our own NJFW Wildlife Management Area planners are incorporating the CHANJ layers into their acquisition priorities. Towns and Counties can do this, too!
Local governments can also include habitat connectivity in their master plans and land use decision-making. Our CHANJ Guidance Document can help you through the process. The Center for Large Landscape Conservation has an excellent guide for “Integrating Wildlife Habitat Connectivity Into Local Government Planning .”
This snippet from the CHANJ Mapping shows a completed wildlife passage project (blue circle) within a CHANJ Corridor (tan-brown gradient). This corridor contains almost no preserved land (yellow), which makes it vulnerable to being fragmented by future development. Land preservation is especially needed in habitat corridors to ensure that animals will continue to have suitable pathways to move through the landscape.
Corridors are critical! – Roughly 70 square kilometers (more than 17,000 acres) of CHANJ-mapped habitats became urbanized in the past decade, with Corridor lands being developed at more than four times the rate as habitat Cores. At the same time, lands within Corridors were protected at less than half the rate as lands within Cores. But when Corridors are severed by development, Core habitats become more isolated and pathways for wildlife movement are lost.
Preserving corridors is critical. Even less traditional acquisitions can be key to holding connectivity together, including:
Roadside parcels – especially ones next to a wildlife passage project , where investments have already been made to help wildlife cross safely under roadways.
Smaller parcels that stand apart from existing open space lands.
Preserving corridors through central NJ is especially urgent, since few remain there and most are narrow and road-dense, creating a high degree of difficulty for wildlife trying to move through the landscape.
Culvert data – The North Atlantic Aquatic Connectivity Collaborative* (NAACC) culvert inventory provides valuable insight into how passable (or impassable) our bridge and culvert infrastructure are for fish and wildlife. More than 700 stream crossing structures have been assessed across New Jersey, and you can view them from the CHANJ Mapping . The NAACC ratings (ranging from “no barrier” to “severe barrier”) can help guide actions at the local level by showing which structures could use a connectivity upgrade, like perhaps a widening the next time the structure is due for replacement.
Chapter 4 of our CHANJ Guidance Document has helpful information on how to design and construct effective wildlife passage systems. Or, if a structure already shows up as a blue dot in the NAACC layer (a “no barrier” or “insignificant barrier” rating), this may be a great place to simply protect natural land on both sides!
*Note: NAACC is currently merging with other regional efforts to form the National Aquatic Connectivity Collaborative (NACC).
Restore CHANJ parcels – Existing protected lands, farmlands, unused portions of recreational properties and large-scale lawns are all examples of places in your community where a bit of habitat restoration can benefit connectivity – especially within CHANJ-mapped areas. Riparian zones around streams and rivers are critical for wildlife movement, so creating wider natural buffers with native trees or other plantings is one action with big benefits. Funding and incentives may be available through your local watershed association or USDA office; our CHANJ Guidance Document (Chapter 4 ) lists some habitat restoration contacts.
Road Transect Surveys – Local governments and organizations can do standardized roadkill monitoring to help identify problem spots in your area, like places with frequent roadkill or at-risk species being impacted by roads. These data are useful to transportation managers and to our CHANJ project, pointing us toward opportunities to build safer road-crossings for animals and contributing to other ecological studies, such as our recent Gene Flow Study . It’s an excellent way to engage volunteers from your community. Please coordinate with the CHANJ team to plan your effort!
How YOU Can Be Part of the CHANJ! Local Governments and Organizations
Photo Credit: Daniel Magda
