Helping animals cross the road

“Ecosystems at Risk” identifies most of northern New Jersey as Skylands, abutting the Appalachian range where bobcats roam. Bobcats need to travel dozens of miles a night to hunt, through a territory that can expand to hundreds of square miles.

But state highways can make roaming difficult, sometimes impossible. I-95, for example, effectively bisects the state, preventing bobcat movement from North to Central Jersey.

To help animals traverse the state, the N.J. Department of Environmental Protection began identifying bridges and culverts that allow wildlife passage underneath roadways.

Connecting Habitat Across New Jersey, or CHANJ, began about six years ago to encourage state agencies, developers and residents to maintain existing passages and incorporate additional passageways into new construction.

“The concern is obvious in a state like New Jersey,” said Gretchen Fowles, a NJDEP biologist who works on the CHANJ project. “It’s so urbanized and with so many roads, wildlife really need to be able to move and get from place to place.”

The efforts of CHANJ recently got a boost from Trenton, where in July legislators passed the Wildlife Corridor Action Plan, which mandates the identification and protection of animal passageways through the state’s built environments.

CHANJ has created a public-facing data map pinpointing built passageways across the state, overlayed with known wildlife routes and areas of protected land.

One of the most prominent passages is in the Pinelands of South Jersey, the largest contiguous forested region in the Eastern United States. But its 1.1 million acres are cut in two by the Atlantic City Expressway, effectively acting as a kind of Berlin Wall for animals in the Pine Barrens.