Ecological Preserve

Photo of Dekay’s brown snake trying to cross the road; by Tianqi Huang, PhD student Rutgers Ecology & Evolution Program Oftentimes, population ecology of herpetofauna is overlooked in the existing body of literature due to their elusive and secretive nature. However, some reptile species tend to occur at high densities in urbanized environments and can be frequently encountered, which renders them good model organisms to explore various aspects of reptile population ecology. Tianqi Huang, PhD student in Rutgers Ecology &…

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Celebrate  National Trails Day at EcoPreserve  Saturday June1    11am-1pm 2024 Various activities including; litter clean-up, trail work and a guided hike Meet at EcoPreserve Parking Lot Road 3 for hike & clean-up Bring a water bottle.  more info at https://americanhiking.org/national-trails-day/  

There a number of Volunteer Work Days planned this Spring to continue the construction of an accessible trail that leads from the parking lot down towards Buell Brook before looping back. The trail is composed of crushed red shale stone dust overtop landscaping fabric and contained by plastic edging or landscape timbers. The trail winds through the woods to reduce the steepness of the slope. When completed the trail should provide access to wheelchairs, walkers and child strollers. Work Day…

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Morgan Mark is a PhD student in the Maslo Lab who is studying wildlife interactions, such as scavenging, that could facilitate disease transmission. This winter, Morgan is deploying cameras and roadkill deer carcasses across New Jersey to determine how scavenging communities and efficiencies vary across a wildland-to-urban gradient. After only a week, her site in the Rutgers Ecological Preserve yielded interesting footage and piqued the curiosity of multiple bucks, a red fox, and a raccoon. Morgan will continue to monitor her…

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