Event Description
Help The Nature Conservancy raise awareness of how important New Jersey's habitats are for wildlife! Sign up for our FREE virtual event that challenges you to walk or run routes through some of our state's iconic landscapes without ever having to leave your neighborhood. The first 75 participants will get a free NJ Walk for Wildlife t-shirt!
Register, print your bib to show solidarity for nature, and then put your sneakers on to walk or run around the block, in a park, or even indoors on a treadmill--wherever you feel safe (and following CDC guidelines). Keep track of your completed distances and enter your tallies on one of our three route options--the Cape May beach, forests of Bobcat Alley or cool waters of the Paulins Kill River--and then follow your progress virtually on our route maps. Earn a digital badge for each race leg completed!
Finish one route or all three; you have one full month from October 15 to November 15 to complete the journey, right when the local weather is perfect for exercise. The animals and pathways of this virtual event represent some of The Nature Conservancy's most active conservation projects in New Jersey:
Cape May Beach
The fragile piping plover relies on New Jersey's beaches for nesting and raising young. Our total restoration at South Cape May Meadows not only provides habitat for this endangered species and other animals, but also protects the surrounding towns from flooding. Celebrate by completing a 3.1-mile (5K) virtual route along the Cape May shoreline that culminates on the shores of TNC's birding-paradise preserve.
Bobcat Alley
Bobcats once went extinct in New Jersey and are still endangered here. We are working to create Bobcat Alley, a protected habitat corridor that links the Appalachian and Highland mountain ranges so that these charismatic native felines have room to roam and thrive. The small population of cats here need to move an average of 7 miles a day to survive! Walk or run this 6-mile virtual route that follows an uninterrupted section of the greenway from White Lake WMA to the Delaware Water Gap, just like a bobcat would.
Paulins Kill River
American shad migrate every year from the Atlantic Ocean up the Delaware River and its tributaries to spawn, and then back again. We have undertaken a full restoration of the Paulins Kill, New Jersey's third largest tributary to the Delaware, removing the 100-year old Columbia Dam migration impediment and restoring habitat along the river's banks and headwaters to improve water quality for this struggling fish species. Mark the 11 miles of river that were opened to shad spawning by the removal of the Columbia Dam on this route! You will follow the shad's path from the Delaware, up the Paulins Kill to the next migratory barrier TNC is already working to eliminate, the Paulina Dam.
Get moving for wildlife!
