New Jersey at the Crossroads of Migration

New Jersey is the staging or nesting place for 349 species of birds, 94% migratory, some journeying 20,000 miles a year to complete planetary appointments for eating, mating, and fledging of young. I think this book is a litmus of how little we have learned in the quarter century since Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, an invitation to local vigilance. New Jersey is America's most densely populated state, even with the sparsely settled million acre Pinelands, and we are not only a physical crossroads for fabulous bird migrations but a temporal crossroads where we will determine whether our use of the land will allow the birds to persist...and ourselves with them. New Jersey is the nexus mine shaft, and we have three hundred and fifty kinds of canaries to warn us before we choke on the lethal fumes of our own combustion. - from the introduction by Scott McVay