The Trust for Public Land has purchased and donated the AT&T “telephone pole site” to the Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge. Save Barnegat Bay played an important role by making the land eligible for federal acquisition.
The Trust for Public Land — a separate group from Save Barnegat Bay — has purchased and donated the AT&T “telephone pole site” to the Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge. Good Luck Point is the land at the junction of Toms River and Barnegat Bay. It is the northeasterly most point in Bayville (Berkeley Township).
Save Barnegat Bay played an important role in this process, although we did not participate in the final purchase and donation. In the early 1990’s SBB initiated and led the effort to make this land, and over 8,000 other acres on the western shore of Barnegat Bay, eligible for inclusion in the Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge.
We salute the Trust for Public Land for their hard and successful work on this project.
We also thank and congratulate the Township of Berkeley, with whom we have had ongoing disagreements on other issues, but who have served the public well in this project. The township has taken possession of buildings on the site; had they not done this the deal might not have been possible because of the management challenge that such structures pose.
This land now becomes part of the Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, which is managed by the US Fish & Wildlife Service, a part of the US Department of the Interior, a federal agency.
A useful step in managing this site will be to remove the guy wires that support the many poles. These wires were demonstrated in a 1991 survey performed for Save Barnegat Bay by the Herpetological Associates to ensnare and kill migratory birds at a surprisingly high rate.
During this 1991 survey 112 species of birds were observed, including several threatened or endangered species, in just four days of sampling. Among the species observed were Great Blue Heron, Green-backed Heron, Osprey, Northern Harrier, Red-tailed Hawk, Peregrine Falcon, Clapper Rail, and Killdeer. Save Barnegat Bay‘s report was incorporated by the US Fish & Wildlife Service into the Environmental Assessment that made this land eligible for federal acquisition.
