by Jay Watson, Co-Executive Director, New Jersey Conservation Foundation
Swamp pink, in the lily family, has stunning good looks and a spot on both the federal threatened species list and the state endangered species list. What it does not have is the ability to use those attributes to advocate for itself. And therein lies the problem for the plant and others like it in need of protection in New Jersey: Though upwards of 350 species are considered endangered here, the designation is a little like paying to name a star. A piece of paper may make it official, but in most areas nothing special happens as a result.
Swamp pink is found along the Eastern U.S. from New Jersey to Georgia. It seems to like this state we’re in better than anywhere else. About half of all swamp pink populations in the world can be found in the swamps, bogs, and wet meadows of the Garden State, mostly in South Jersey counties like Cumberland, Cape May, Ocean, Salem, and Burlington. But their three-foot-tall, asparagus-like stalks and bubblegum pink flowers also poke up as far north as Morris County.
The species started declining 50 years ago here and elsewhere. Herds of overabundant, ravenous deer plus pollution and development, particularly the egregious siltation of streams that happens when the earth is disturbed for building, changed things for swamp pink. In the 1970s, the species was thriving; by 1988, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed it as endangered (it is now considered threatened). New Jersey is home to dozens of plant species that are arguably even more fragile, among them Hammond’s yellow spring beauty, which is exclusive to Sussex County.
Because of the federal listing, swamp pink qualifies for state listing, too. But its status often doesn’t mean much, especially outside of the Pinelands, said Russell Juleg, New Jersey Conservation Foundation’s senior land steward.
Of the six species of plants growing in New Jersey that are considered threatened or endangered by the federal government, including swamp pink, “those statuses don’t result in a lot of action,” he said. “Unless a violation occurs on federal or state land, there’s very little in terms of actual protections for them.”
For example, if a swamp pink is growing in your backyard, unless you’re doing something that requires a permit, there’s nothing any government official, state or federal, can do to stop you from yanking it up and bulldozing it.
Even in the Pinelands, the plants aren’t necessarily afforded meaningful protections, Juelg said. Although the Pinelands Commission keeps a list of threatened and endangered plants and strives to protect them (swamp pink is on this list, too), the Commission lacks effective enforcement powers. And efforts to change that have been slow going. Juelg and Emile DeVito, Ph.D., New Jersey Conservation Foundation’s staff biologist, have been working together for two decades to draft a statute to protect threatened and endangered plants in New Jersey.
“But every time it’s been introduced to state legislature” – roughly five times, Juelg said – “it never gets out of committee.” An attitude of futility is often the problem. “The current version, Assembly Bill 1817, is a new opportunity for our representatives to protect New Jersey’s biodiversity.”
“Plant blindness,” our cultural tendency to think of plants more as wallpaper than living beings, doesn’t help the push for added protection.
But there’s no doubt that plants and their protection matter. Plants are easily Earth’s most dominant life form, making up 80% of total biomass. They’re the basis for all other forms of life in an ecosystem, the cornerstone of biodiversity. And they’re taken for granted in most modern societies. More than half the species protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act are plants. In 2020, they received less than 4% of federal endangered species funding. As Juelg and DeVito have found, they don’t have the political clout of animal species that attract attention or get in people’s way.
Biologist and New Jersey Conservation Foundation’s stewardship team member Martin Rapp considers swamp pink our state’s poster child for why plant protections matter, and why we need to ramp them up.
“It’s beautiful, it’s federally threatened, and it has a very important population in the range of the plant in New Jersey,” he said. Our status as a swamp pink stronghold hasn’t moved us as a state as much as it should.
“The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is helping to raise awareness of the significance of plants, including New Jersey’s native and rare flora,” said Bob Cartica, administrator of the DEP’s Office of Natural Lands Management. “I think it’s clear that education will be key to ensuring that future generations better understand the significance that plants play in our daily lives. That’s why the DEP recently launched its botanical literacy initiative to help combat ‘plant blindness.'”
Implementing stronger protections and conservation measures in New Jersey will mean more tracking of the vulnerable plants, and more regulations. But we’ll all benefit. The loss of threatened and endangered plants would not only diminish the state’s natural beauty but also disrupt the complex ecological systems that form the web of life. We have to take action now to protect these irreplaceable resources.
To watch a video about swamp pink conservation efforts in New Jersey, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImcyQ3nWDBk&t=3s.
To learn more about plant blindness, read https://www.njconservation.org/getting-botanically-literate-in-the-garden-state/
To learn more about the DEP’s Botanical Literacy initiative, go to
https://www.nj.gov/dep/parksandforests/natural/heritage/botanical_literacy.html
