EAST BRUNSWICK — It's just after sunset — the sky is a darkening blue. The woods are quiet with only the sounds of crickets chirping to disturb the dusk. It's warm and wet.
The mood is just right for salamanders.
Every spring, a little bit of nature plays out before us as salamanders exit the forest and make their way to pools to find their mate.
In East Brunswick, the annual rite of passage has become a community event. Streets are closed so as not to imperil the salamanders' crossing and dozens come out to help nature take it course.
When you're only 3 inches long, crossing the street is a life-threatening trek, so to help the salamanders along, East Brunswick, in cooperation with South Brunswick, has closed Beekman Road, between Church Lane in East Brunswick and Davidson’s Mill Road in South Brunswick, for 11 years, saving hundreds of amphibian lives and giving people who come from all over central New Jersey a chance to safely watch nature in action.
"It was an amazing night, so many salamanders and so many people," said David Moskowitz, president of the Friends of the East Brunswick Environmental Commission, after the migration on Tuesday evening. "Reports from the road suggest there were hundreds crossing through the night and there must have been well over 100 people there" to watch.
Arnold Horowitz, an East Brunswick resident, brought his11-year-old son Billy after seeing information about the salamander migration on Facebook.
"Before tonight, I thought it was a joke," Horowitz said. "Not anymore."
Billy thought salamanders "are cool."
Michelle Eden, a Spotswood resident, had her 6-year-old granddaughters with her on Beekman Road.
"I've always wanted to see them crossing, but I never got the chance," Eden said. "I decided today, I was going. This is the first time I've walked the road."
Closing the road can be the difference between a healthy mating season and roadkill, Moskowitz said.
"It's evident we're getting a lot more egg masses in the pools than before we began closing Beekman Road," he said. "We're also getting a lot of young female salamanders crossing."
He said last year there were even egg masses in vernal pools that haven't been used in years.
Salamanders spend most of the year in forests, but they must find standing water to mate and hatch eggs after the first warm spring rains begin.
McKenzie Hall, a biologist with The Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey, runs a program in northern and parts of central New Jersey, deploying volunteers to areas where the amphibians are known to migrate and help them cross roads.
"Most of those areas don't have road closures because many are out in the country where there are fewer options for detours," she explained. "We will shuttle them across the road as part of the rescue." On a typical crossing, some sites could have 100 to 200 amphibians crossing an hour, Hall said. They include spotted and Jefferson salamanders and peep and wood frogs.
Hall said her volunteers are working at six sites, two in Passaic, two in Sussex and two in Warren counties. She said volunteers used to close roads at the sites, but stopped about six or seven years ago because the detours might take motorists to another amphibian crossing.
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After their time in the pool, the salamanders cross back into the forest, but Moskowitz and Hall said that journey isn’t as perilous because they go back individually, not all at once.
It takes the eggs a month to two months to hatch and another month before the babies grow into adults and go into the forest.
Moskowitz said the pools in East Brunswick are deeper and none of them dried out before the salamanders could hatch.
“So many vernal pools have been lost in New Jersey to farming and development,” he said. “That’s why it’s so important to protect what we have.”
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