New Jersey is the nation’s most densely populated state, packed with 9.2 million people from High Point to Cape May Point. It’s not the easiest place for wild animals to cross the road.
A recently finished five-year study by the NJDEP Fish & Wildlife’s Connecting Habitat Across New Jersey looked at 1,669 DNA samples collected from 33 different native mammal species across the state. Some samples were taken from roadkill, others from legally harvested animals. The study, conducted by 100 volunteers armed with scissors, test tubes and rubber gloves that New Jersey’s prolific development — highways, roads, strip malls — inhibits their ability to disperse, to spread their genes.
“We hypothesize that carnivores like coyotes and bobcats may be having the hardest time because of their large area requirements compared to other animals. But landscape “resistance” appears to be an issue for species with smaller home ranges too, including woodchucks and Eastern cottontails (rabbits),” the study’s authors wrote.
