NJ has bobcats? Yep – and here's a way to save them

When Jack Branagan left Bergen County in 1976 and built a log cabin in an undeveloped, forested area of Sussex County, he soon discovered that a developer planned to raze trees and disturb wetlands right across the street to build a complex of 170 townhouses.

Branagan jumped into action, buying up the 55 acres in Stillwater Township. ."No way was I going to let a developer get his hands on that land,” he said. “It takes people like us to say you don’t have to pave everything.”

Now, four decades later, the property has become one of the first puzzle pieces in The Nature Conservancy’s bid to create a “Bobcat Alley” so the state’s endangered wild cats can roam unimpeded across northwestern New Jersey.

The Branagans sold the property to the conservancy at a reduced price. It’s one of about 150 properties covering 9,000 acres that the conservancy has identified for purchase and protection over the next decade across a swath of Warren and Sussex counties. The conservancy plans to raise about $60 million for the project.

So far five properties, totaling about 475 acres, have been preserved. The purchases will help connect another 10,000 acres of land already protected and owned by the state and counties, as well as several nature preserves already owned by various land conservation groups.

“We want to try and protect as much land with high-quality habitat as we can before it gets fragmented by development,” said Eric Olsen, The Nature Conservancy’s director of land programs. “We want to hold the line – keep the land this way before there’s excessive development and traffic. It doesn’t matter who owns it if it’s preserved."

Working with several partner groups, The Nature Conservancy wants to preserve a wide corridor of undeveloped land – or land that would remain as farmland - that could act as a valley corridor between two north-south ridgelines in the state – the Highlands and the Kittatinny ridges, where different populations of bobcats live.

“The alley is another step to ensure bobcat populations can stay connected,” Olsen said. “That’s the best way to keep the gene pool healthy – to provide suitable corridors.”

One recent morning Olsen stood on a section of the Kittatinny Ridge, facing east, overlooking Fairview Lake, Stillwater and the land targeted for protection. Trees were just starting to show the lacy green of spring, and undulating forestland was punctuated in the east by the distant white dots of a development.

Like mountain lions and wolves, bobcats had become virtually extinct in New Jersey by the 1960s because of a number of issues. First, early settlers hunted and trapped them for their pelts. Then clear-cutting for lumber, charcoal and farming gobbled up their forest habitat.

“If you look at aerial photos of this area from the 1930s, it’s shocking how little is forest and how it’s mostly farmland,” said Bob Canace, president of the Ridge and Valley Conservancy, which works to preserve undeveloped land in the region.

Finally, development further fragmented what remained into sections of woodland that were too small to sustain the cats. A single bobcat needs about 20 miles of territory in which to roam, as it hunts for food and mates.

Then, from 1978 to 1982, the state Division of Fish and Wildlife launched a restoration project to reintroduce the bobcat to the state. Scientists captured 24 bobcats in Maine and released them in Northern New Jersey.

Bobcats are extremely shy, but today sightings are on the rise, mostly in Sussex, Warren, Passaic and Morris counties, with scattered sightings in Bergen and Hunterdon counties.

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Because they are hard to spot, the state does not have a clear idea of how large the bobcat population is today, but Olsen said some estimates put the number at about 250 to 280. The bobcat is still listed as endangered in New Jersey.

Similar reintroduction efforts have been successful in the state for wild turkeys. A new effort by New Jersey Audubon has started to reintroduce bobwhites, a small quail, to central New Jersey. Populations of coyotes and black bears have also risen across North Jersey in recent years.

One of the issues for the bobcats is that as they cross roadways to move through separate patches of woodland, they are sometimes hit by cars.

In March the state released a bobcat at Wawaywanda State Park in Passaic County that had been hit by a car in the fall. It had multiple femur and joint fractures to its right hind leg that required pins, wires, screws and plates to repair. The bobcat was rehabilitated at the Woodlands Wildlife Refuge in Pittstown.

Adult bobcats grow to about two feet tall, and range from 18 to 35 pounds, depending on gender. They have slightly tufted ears and a short bobbed tail, and hunt mostly at dawn and dusk for mice, rabbits, squirrels, birds, turkeys and the occasional baby deer.

“They live partly on mice, which is a vector for ticks that carry Lyme disease,” Canace said. “So they represent an important part of the ecosystem and have a direct impact on humans.”

They only eat about 3 pounds of meat at a time, so they will drag a larger animal to a safe spot, camouflage it and return later to feed again.

To buy up property, the Nature Conservancy is partnering with other environmental land preservation groups, including New Jersey Audubon and the Ridge and Valley Conservancy. In some cases, rather than buying up the land, they will work with owners to establish easements where the land remains in the original owners’ hands but is preserved from development.

Each partner brings a particular tool to the task. For instance, Ridge and Valley Conservancy will use Green Acres money from the state and cajole matches from the county or town government to help cover the cost of a purchase, and that gets combined with privately raised donations raised by The Nature Conservancy, Canace said.

Then the Blairstown-based Ridge and Valley Conservancy will maintain and manage the site, freeing The Nature Conservancy to move on to other properties.

Canace said the Ridge and Valley Conservancy has been protecting Kittatinny Ridge forestland for 25 years to preserve habitat for migrating songbirds, black bears and bobcats. It now owns several thousand acres jointly with the Nature Conservancy, and has another 1,300 acres protected through negotiated easements with private property owners.

While the land preservation projects take place in one of the most politically conservative parts of the state, the conservancy has received strong support for its work from county and town governments, Canace said.

“It’s not a problem getting support for open space,” he said. “People know the value of protecting land because they all rely on groundwater for their drinking water. And many people have a feeling of attachment to the land. They don’t want to see it change.”

As word has gotten out about the conservancy’s purchases, adjacent landowners have approached them about making similar deals, he said. Some will sell at below-market prices, allowing them to take an income tax deduction over a five-year period.

“It’s amazing how the mosaic starts coming together,” Canace said.

Canace grew up in Maplewood in the shadow of South Mountain Reservation, a 2,100-acre swath of forested valley and ridge along the Watchung Mountains protected from development by county officials back in 1895. He said that foresight and vision has inspired his work in western New Jersey. “We want to preserve as much as we can,” he said, “because we don’t know what the future holds.”

“It does surprise a lot of people that we do have deep wilderness here in New Jersey, with bobcats, bald eagles, rattlesnakes – it’s some really rich habitat for endangered species,” Canace said.

Bobcats, being “warm and fuzzy,” also make for better mascots for such land preservation efforts, he said. “I don’t think a ‘Rattlesnake Alley’ is going to bring in nearly as many donations,” he said, laughing.