WILD NEW JERSEY: Wild New Jersey Exclusive: Salamanders kickoff migration season in East Brunswick

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WILD NEW JERSEY: Wild New Jersey Exclusive: Salamanders kickoff migration season in East Brunswick

Wild New Jersey Exclusive: Salamanders kickoff migration season in East Brunswick

Spotted salamander
All photos by David Wheeler and Kayla Halsted

The annual migration of amphibians across the roads of New Jersey has begun. The torrential rains of this past weekend kicked off the quests of salamanders and frogs, which leave their winter burrows each year in search of vernal ponds where they can mate and lay eggs safe from fish and other predators.

The East Brunswick Environmental Commission has hosted a public event each spring for the past decade along Beekman Road, which is closed to the public for a handful of nights to allow the amphibians to cross safely. Wild New Jersey's David Wheeler and Kayla Halsted visited the road on the weekend's opening night and were excited to find a number of spotted salamanders and a spring peeper. The calls of spring peepers echoed through the woods along the road, just a hundred yards away from the roaring New Jersey Turnpike. You'd never know it from the suburban wildness of this nighttime secluded road driven only by amphibians.

According to Rich Wolfert of East Brunswick, at least 27 spotted salamanders and around the same number of spring peepers were spotted through the course of the first night, and a single chorus frog was found - only the second report ever of this reclusive amphibian on the Beekman Road crossings.

More information about upcoming crossings - possibly accompanying the next nighttime rain - can be found at http://web.mac.com/rwolfert/NJ_Nature_Notes_Website/Salamander_Page.html