Victims of Sprawl

Nature has been forced to adapt or face extinction as North Jersey natives make their paved paradises wider and deeper

MAY 16, 2004
By GREG RUMMO

     WHEN JONI MITCHELL wrote “Big Yellow Taxi,” I doubt she realized how popular her song would become. But the opening lyrics to that catchy tune: “They paved paradise, they put up a parking lot,” have caught on in a big way, especially in this Age of the Internet. A search on Google.com returns over 13,000 hits including a few websites dedicated to environmental issues.

Here in New Jersey, where all 8 million of us are packed in tightly like rats in a maze, making our state the most densely populated in the nation, Mitchell’s song has a special resonance in suburbia where every year more and more of our paradise is paved over; not just by macadam parking lots but by highways, shopping malls, town home complexes and office buildings.

It’s called sprawl—the encroachment of metropolis on suburbia; of development upon nature. In New Jersey it’s the inevitable result of affluence as more and more people want out of the hot, noisy, cities to escape from the constant cacophony of traffic, rap music and wailing emergency vehicles at all hours of the night.

But in our quest for “the good life”—cool summer evenings in wooded surroundings with a symphony of crickets and katydids—the very things from which we have sought refuge have followed close behind. 

I moved to the foothills of the Highlands in northern Morris County twelve years ago with my family. My drive to the office every morning took me past Sun Tan Lake in Riverdale, a fun place where dad brought the whole family for a swim in the country on a summer weekend.  A little further down the road where the steep grade of Route 23 crosses over I-287, the Pompton River valley spreads out in a rolling vista. The view from the crest of that hill is breathtaking. In the distance on the other side of the valley are the rolling, tree covered hills of Oakland and Wayne.

The view now is breathtaking for a different reason.

The hills are covered with housing developments. Sun Tan Lake is a distant memory having gone the way of sprawl several years ago. A mall with a Home Depot, a Staples and a BJ’s now sits in its place. A quarter mile to the north, a Wendy’s, an Applebee’s and a Border’s Bookstore is slated for construction soon. And as if traffic isn’t bad enough already, a Wal-Mart is planned a quarter mile south thus setting the stage for the equivalent of a myocardial infarction along Route 23 during rush hour every evening.

The clash over property rights between developers and environmentalists is a long one with no end in sight. But I am beginning to believe that in many cases, it is simply an argument over aesthetics and largely rooted in the adage, “Every man wants to be the last person to move to the country.”

While Homo sapiens debate the impact of sprawl, much of nature ignores all of the shouting at town hall meetings and manages to cope in spite of the loss of habitat.

The building where my office is located in northern Bergen County offers just such a case in point. Eighteen years ago when I started working in Montvale, farms and orchards lined with neat rows of apple and peach trees covered the area. They served as backdrops for farmer’s markets with names like Tice’s and Van Riper’s. Like huge cornucopias, they toed up to the highway, luring passersby with their luscious displays of ripe fruits and vegetables during the late spring and summer.

Each was a short walk from my office and I often spent my lunch hours there, eating outside on one of the picnic tables while fighting off the persistent yellow jackets that never tired from harassing us.

They have gone the way of sprawl—their owners seizing upon the lucrative offers to sell their land to developers who have built the office buildings and shopping malls that now line the county road through Montvale and Woodcliff Lake. Yet, wildlife continues to flourish, not only in the swaths of forests left untouched by the backhoes and bulldozers but in these developed areas as well.

Birds and other wildlife imprint on an area. Their progeny return year after year—like the salmon that seek the rivers of their birth or the swallows that flock to Capistrano. For many species, it doesn’t matter that a field has mysteriously vanished and become a parking lot or an office building now sits where an outcropping of boulders once stood. 

Each year a pair of Canada geese returns to 50 Chestnut Ridge Road and makes a nest in a corner spot in one of the railroad tie planters near our building. In the rocks separating the rows of parked cars, a killdeer sits on a nest, her plumage camouflaging it from all but the most attentive passers-by. And just several yards outside my windows where a border of woods was left untouched, deer are frequent visitors along with red-bellied woodpeckers, red-tailed hawks and even a flock of wild turkey that appeared last autumn to gorge on the acorns scattered on the forest floor.

Coupled with the activity at my two birdfeeders that hang just outside my windows, it’s a menagerie of sorts although I’m the one enclosed in glass peering out into their world. It is an endless source of joyful distraction twelve months of the year. Could it be that sprawl isn’t all that bad? There are some bird species that have been helped by sensible development. Educated homeowners who place birdfeeders, water baths and nest boxes outside in their backyards create “stepping stones” for migratory birds.

“We cannot re-create an entire deep woods forest,” says Ira Grindlinger, the owner of Wild Birds Unlimited on Route 17 South in Paramus, “but we can create a temporary sanctuary. Even a small back yard, can provide an important stepping stone.”

But there is the ugly side to development. Not all of nature is able to cope. And some species can be imperiled by even the smallest changes.

Especially sensitive are birds that rely on deep woods such as the Great Crested Flycatcher, Red-eyed Vireo, Hermit Thrush, Ovenbird, Scarlet Tanager, Broad-winged hawk, Ruffed Grouse, Great Horned Owl, Pileated Woodpecker and the Eastern Wood Peewee. “Something as simple as a one-lane dirt road can alter a habitat,” says Grindlinger. “When a swath of forest is cut down, it admits air and sunlight. Together, they dry out the lower level of the forest.” Grindlinger explains that sunlight alters the plant habitat on the forest floor. The circulation of the warmer air also dries out the accumulated layers of leaf mulch which affects the insect population. And a new habitat for “edge dwellers”—birds that live on the edge of the woods such as the Eastern Bluebird—is created. “The entire food chain is impacted,” Grindlinger says. “A one-lane dirt road can affect a 1000-2000 foot wide swath of forest.”

Birds of the deep woods are not the only species that are sensitive to changes in habitat. The Wood Duck has also struggled. Along with the Hooded Merganser, the Wood Duck makes its nest in a hollow tree cavity. Much of the old growth forests in the northeast were cut down during the 1800’s in an era when sprawl meant something else—farming. As a result, trees large enough to accommodate duck-sized cavities almost disappeared. The loss of habitat coupled with indiscriminant hunting for food and millinery use due to the bird’s exquisite plumage almost drove the Wood Duck to extinction. But wisdom prevailed. With protection from federal legislation beginning with the 1916 Migratory Bird Treaty and the placement of nest boxes to encourage the birds to reproduce, the numbers of wood duck have increased dramatically.

A visit to the Celery Farm in Allendale reveals several nest boxes on poles out on the water to encourage these birds to raise a family. And other organizations such as the Pequannock River Coalition which maintains nest boxes in places like the headwaters of the Rockaway and Pequannock Rivers are doing their share to help.

Birds are not the only animals impacted by sprawl. Trout and the sub-aquatic insects upon which they feed are particularly sensitive. Trout need cold, well-oxygenated water for survival. When trees along a riverbank are cut down, shade is lost and the sunlight warms the water making oxygen less soluble. Trees are also important because their roots hold the soil in place. De-forestation in watersheds increases the amount of silt in runoff water. This impacts a trout’s ability to reproduce because trout require clean gravel over which to lay eggs.  

Paved surfaces also present another problem. They act to warm rain water while blocking its slow percolation through the ground. A good summer cloudburst falling on a hot, asphalt parking lot or highway can send a thermal shock into a stream with adverse impact on the fish. These factors coupled with the continuing depletion of water resources resulting from the digging of new wells place an enormous strain on coldwater fish species.

Considering all of this, it is next to miraculous that the Pequannock River, which flows through the towns of Bloomingdale, Butler and Riverdale, manages to support a population of wild brown trout despite enduring all of the indecencies of malls, dumpsters and housing developments along the way.

It is a tribute to the trout’s ability to cope with sprawl. But what if this ecosystem were pushed too far? And how do we know what “too far” is? Over a century ago in the Catskill Mountains in nearby upstate New York, the native brook trout was almost driven to extinction by the tanlords who clear cut the hemlock forests. They were after the tree’s bark, used as a source of tannin in the tanning process to make leather. If it weren’t for the introduction of the less environmentally sensitive brown trout from Germany around the turn of the century and the re-growth of a secondary forest, rivers like the Beaverkill and the Willowemoc might never have become the storied trout streams they now are.    

Development is a way of life for suburban New Jerseyans. There’s simply no way to escape from it and it’s doubtful anyone will be able to shorten the reach of its ever-lengthening tendrils. So what is important is that developers and environmentalists learn to work together towards sensible development; that which respects man and nature.

Joni Mitchell would remind us: “You don't know what you've got till it's gone.” n

Greg Rummo is an author and syndicated columnist. He is pictured here with one of three wood duck nest boxes he maintains on Lake Edenwold, a 4-acre lake in his backyard in northern Morris County. Click here for details about his second book, “The View from the Grass Roots—Another Look,” published in June 2004.