The Century Plan A Study of One Hundred Conservation Sites in the Barnegat Bay Watershed Researched and Written for the Trust for Public Land by Peter P. Blanchard, III, with assistance from Herpetological Associates, Inc. with assistance and editing by Andrew L. Strauss “I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out until sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.” John Muir Table of Contents Introduction 4 Bay Island Sites 5 Coastal/Near Shore Sites 6 Pineland Sites 7 Recreation/Restoration Sites 8 Portraits of Specific Sites Bay Islands 9 - Black Whale Sedge 9 - Bonnet Island 10 - Cedar Bonnet/Northern and Southern Marshes 11 - Drag Sedge and Hester Sedge 12 - East Sedge 13 - Flat Island and Islets 14 - Ham Island and Islets 15 - Harbor Island (with Al’s Island) 16 - High Island 17 - Hither Island 18 - Little Island 19 - Little Sedge Island 20 - Lower Little Island (Post Island) 20 - Marsh-Elder Islands 21 - Middle Sedge 22 - Middle Sedge Island 23 - Mike’s Island (with Bill’s and Wilde’s Islands) 24 - Mordecai Island 25 - Northwest Point Island 26 - Parkers Island 27 - Pettit Island 28 - Sandy Island 29 - Sedge Island 30 - Shelter Island 31 - Sloop Sedge and Islet 32 - Stooling Point Island 33 - West Sedge 34 - Woods Island 35 Coastal/Near Shore 36 - Barnegat Bay Beach Inland Area 36 1 - Beaver Dam Creek/North Branch 38 - Beaver Dam Creek/South Branch 39 - Cedar Bridge Branch 40 - Cedar Creek Point/Lanoka Harbor 41 - Cedar Creek South 42 - Cedar Run Creek/East of Parkway 43 - Cedar Run Creek/Northwest Extension 44 - Church Road Property 45 - Clamming Creek 47 - Finninger Farm 48 - Forked River Annex and Adjacent Uplands 49 - Forked River Branch 51 - Good Luck Point 52 - Holgate Marshes 53 - Kettle Creek/Green Branch 54 - Kettle Creek North 55 - Kettle Creek Peninsula (Chamberlain Point) 57 - Liberty Harbor 58 - Lighthouse Camp and Bowker Property 59 - Manahawkin Baptist Church Tract 60 - Maple Creek 61 - Metedeconk River/Forge Pond 62 - Middle Branch/Forked River 63 - Murray Grove/Stouts Creek 65 - Oyster Creek/Sands Point Harbor 67 - Pancoast Inland Area 68 - Reedy Creek Additions 70 - Riverside Woods 71 - Roberts Avenue Marsh 72 - Silver Bay Watershed Extensions 73 - Sloop Creek Road Area 74 - Sloop Creek Western Extensions 75 - Sunrise Beach 76 - Tilton Point 77 - Waterford 79 Pinelands 82 - Berkeley Triangle 82 - Blacks and Rickles Branches 84 - Cabin Branch 85 - Cabinfield Branch 86 - Cotterals Branch 87 - Davenport Branch West 89 - Deer Head Lake North 89 - Double Trouble State Park/Out Parcels 91 - Forked River Mountains and Vicinity 92 - Giffords Mill Branch 95 - Green, Big Wrangle, and Run Branches 96 - Irish Branch 98 - Jake’s Branch Corridor 99 - Keswick Lake Corridor 101 - Maple Root Branch and Long Brook 102 - Mill Branch/Tuckerton Creek 103 - Mill Creek West 105 - Old Hurricane Brook 106 - Otis Bogs/Willis Creek (Tuckers Creek) 107 - Oxly Tract 108 - Ridgeway Branch 109 - Riverwood Park Extensions 110 2 - Slab Branch 111 - Toms River/Dove Mill Branch 112 - Waretown Creek 113 - Wells Mills Girl and Boy Scout Camps 114 - Wells Mills Park – Area ‘E’ 115 - Westecunk Creek 116 - Whiting Clay Pits 117 Recreation/Restoration 119 - Anchor Reef Marina 119 - Berkeley Harbor Marina 120 - Dredge Spoil Islands 121 - Historic Seaport Project 123 - Huddy Park/Proposed Expansion 124 - Mallard Point 125 - Sand and Gravel Mining Sites 127 Bibliography 130 Appendices Legislation and Land Use 135 Defining Endangered and Threatened Species 139 List of Scientific Names of Species 140 Acknowledgments 150 3 Introduction The Century Plan \ ‘sench-(-)re ‘plan \ 1: a Trust for Public Land study of one-hundred (100) unique conservation and public access sites in the Barnegat Bay watershed area 2: a regional land conservation blueprint for the Barnegat Bay in the 21st Century 3: a citizen’s guide to ordinary and extraordinary natural and cultural landscapes along the central New Jersey shore f the late House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill’s assertion that “All politics is local” was adapted by naturalists, then they would likely decree, “All conservation is local.” And nowhere in New Jersey does I this statement ring with greater importance than in the Barnegat Bay watershed of Ocean County. Covering more than 450 square miles of tidal shoreline, backbay islands, marsh creeks, and pine/oak forests, the Barnegat Bay region is a delight to those whose primary interest is natural resources. With a resident population of 450,000, which doubles (and sometimes triples) during the summer months, the Barnegat Bay region functions as a premier tourist and vacation destination in the New Jersey- Pennsylvania-New York area. Yet a surprisingly small percentage of residents and visitors are knowledgeable about Barnegat Bay’s astonishing ecological diversity, integrity, and long-term conservation requirements. It was to address the need for a better awareness and understanding of open space in the Bay watershed and to celebrate the Barnegat Bay region that the Trust for Public Land undertook the Century Plan. By way of background, the Barnegat Bay is a coastal estuary (some scientists label it a coastal “lagoon”) roughly 40 miles long and one to four miles wide. As an estuary, Barnegat Bay is a place where fresh and salt water combine in a shallow, productive, and delicately balanced aquatic environment which allows sunlight to reach the Bay floor. About 75 percent of the Bay is less than six feet deep at mean low tide, while overall depth varies from three to twenty feet. Perhaps most astonishing is the Barnegat Bay's low rate of tidal exchange (defined as the proportion of water escaping seaward each tidal cycle). With a nearly unbroken chain of barrier islands that form a seaward cap, the complete turnover of water in the Barnegat Bay occurs once every 96 tidal cycles, about every 50 days. Given this incredibly low rate of “flushing,” the pollutants, sewer effluent, and urban runoff that enter the Bay — directly or through upland creeks and watersheds — remain for a decidedly long time! As our population continues its inevitable growth and coastal expansion, so must we redouble our activities to “buffer” the Barnegat Bay by conserving for future generations key recreational lands and remaining open spaces. Since 1991 the Trust for Public Land (TPL) has managed to acquire and protect over 3,500 acres in the Barnegat Bay watershed with a market value exceeding $18 million. However, we cannot do it alone. True land conservation is a partnership effort — one that combines the ideals of citizens with the capacity of government and enlightened action of private property management. There are great benefits in creating parks and reserves by placing open space under municipal, county, state, or federal jurisdiction. It must be stressed, however, that private land ownership remains an effective conservation approach, particularly when reinforced with ecological information and preferred management techniques. As a study of potential conservation lands, the Century Plan serves as a compendium of sites that TPL believes are of long-term importance to the Barnegat Bay as an ecosystem and a treasured public resource. The order of site listing does not, in any fashion, constitute a ranking. 4 The Century Plan was meticulously researched and written over an eighteen-month period by Peter P. Blanchard, III, TPL’s field biologist, whose eye for habitat, history, and culture was enhanced by many friends and interviewees throughout the Bay region, to whom we owe so very much. From the tidal flats to the bog to the forested upland, from sites of two acres to those of twenty thousand, Peter gained a profound respect for the intricacies and mysteries of the Bay region, a respect that we trust will be communicated through the pages which follow. Beyond its role as a catalyst for land protection efforts, the Century Plan is a celebration of the Barnegat Bay and its watershed. We hope the Century Plan will survive as a “good read” for those who use the Barnegat Bay: the naturalists, boaters, fishermen, hunters, beachcombers, birdwatchers, and (yes) motorists, who might pause to recall that all conservation is, ultimately, local. Andrew L. Strauss The Trust for Public Land Morristown, New Jersey Bay Islands eemingly suspended in time and yet forever changing, islands lie at the heart of the Bay landscape. In meeting the dictionary definition of “a land mass, especially one smaller than a continent, entirely S surrounded by water,” an island, in whole or in part, must be exposed at high tide. Thus the thousands of shoals, sandbars, and mudflats that are rimmed by salt water and exposed only at low tides do not qualify. An approximate number of islands in Barnegat Bay and its southern reach, Little Egg Harbor, is 165. The exact number of islands is hard to pin down, as dynamic change characterizes the meeting of marine and terrestrial environments. Over decades and centuries, islands have been created as high tides and storm surges carved out pieces of larger landforms or as inlets in the Bay’s barrier islands have permitted the Atlantic Ocean to bring in sediment. Man has had a distinctive role in island creation through the dredging of channels and the deposition of dredge spoil. Islands marked on nautical charts in this decade have disappeared beneath the waves, victims of erosion, augmented by rising sea level. Bay islands generally fall into two categories, sedge islands or dredge spoil islands. Sedge islands are composed chiefly of marsh grasses and their substrate — a peat mat containing plant materials and sediment. Dredge spoil islands consist of sand and sediments removed from the Bay floor in dredging operations. The latter largely artificial land masses are discussed in the section on restoration/recreation sites.