The Animals Of Massachusetts

Section 01

Where American Wildlife Was Lost First, And Recovered First

Massachusetts was settled early and cleared fast, which means it ran through the full cycle of wildlife destruction and recovery before most of the country had started. By the mid-1800s the state was roughly 70 percent deforested, and wolves, cougars, moose, beaver, wild turkey, and white-tailed deer were all gone or nearly so. Massachusetts passed the first American wildlife protection law in the colonies and also drove several species out entirely.

Then the farms failed. As agriculture moved west, New England fields grew back to forest, and Massachusetts is now around 60 percent wooded. Everything that could return did: beaver, turkey, deer, black bear, moose, bobcat, fisher, and coyote all recolonised or were restored, mostly in the second half of the 20th century. Massachusetts today has more large wildlife than it did in 1850 despite having roughly seven million people.

The coast is where the state is globally significant. Cape Cod hooks out into the Atlantic and, with Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, creates a mix of shoals, bays, and shallow banks. Cape Cod Bay and Stellwagen Bank are among the most important feeding areas on the East Coast for whales, including the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale, which gathers here each spring in numbers representing a large share of the entire species.

The most striking recent change is at the top of the marine food chain. Gray seals were nearly extirpated from Massachusetts and are now abundant, with tens of thousands around the Cape. Great white sharks followed the seals, and Cape Cod is now one of the most reliable white shark aggregation sites in the Atlantic, which has changed both the ecology and the way people use the beaches.

Section 02

Massachusetts's Official State Animals

The right whale designation in 1980 is similarly pointed. The species is named for being the right whale to hunt, because it swims slowly and floats when killed, and the New England whaling industry pursued it heavily. Fewer than 400 remain.

Section 03

Habitats By Region, And Who Lives In Each

1. Berkshires and western uplands

Northern hardwood and spruce-fir forest on the state's highest ground, with limestone fens, cold streams, and the largest unbroken forest blocks. Black bear are concentrated here, along with bobcat, fisher, moose, timber rattlesnake at a handful of den sites, bog turtle, and breeding forest birds including blackburnian and black-throated blue warblers. See Appalachian Mountains.

2. Connecticut River valley

A fertile lowland with traprock ridges, oxbows, and floodplain forest. Peregrine falcons nest on the ridges, bald eagles along the river, and the valley is a migration corridor. Shortnose sturgeon persist in the river, and shad and sea lamprey run upstream past fish passage facilities.

3. Central uplands and eastern woodlands

Rolling mixed oak, pine, and hemlock forest with reservoirs including Quabbin, a large protected watershed that functions as accidental wildlife refuge. White-tailed deer, coyote, beaver, and wild turkey are common, and bald eagles nest at Quabbin, where the state's reintroduction began in the 1980s.

4. Coastal plain, pine barrens, and salt marsh

Southeastern Massachusetts holds globally rare pitch pine and scrub oak barrens supporting many rare moths and the eastern box turtle. Salt marsh along the North Shore and around the Cape supports saltmarsh sparrow, willet, and clapper rail, and Plum Island and Parker River hold major shorebird concentrations.

5. Cape Cod, the Islands, and offshore banks

Barrier beach, kettle pond, heathland, and grassland on Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, plus the shoals and banks offshore. Piping plover and least tern nest on the beaches, roseate terns nest on Bird and Ram islands in one of the most important colonies in the western Atlantic, and northern harriers hunt Nantucket's heathlands. Offshore, humpback, finback, minke, and right whales feed on Stellwagen Bank, with white sharks and gray and harbour seals nearshore.

Section 04

Whales, Seals, And Sharks

Massachusetts waters are the state's most nationally significant wildlife asset, and three linked stories define them.

Right whales. Cape Cod Bay is the most important known spring feeding area for the North Atlantic right whale. In some years a majority of the entire remaining population, which numbers only a few hundred animals, passes through in a matter of weeks, skim-feeding on dense copepod patches close enough to shore to be seen from land. Massachusetts imposes seasonal vessel speed restrictions and fishing gear closures in the bay to protect them. Entanglement in fixed fishing gear and vessel strikes remain the two causes of death.

Seals. Gray and harbour seals were bounty-hunted in Massachusetts into the 20th century and were nearly gone. Federal protection under the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972 allowed recovery, and gray seals now number in the tens of thousands around the Cape, with large haul-outs at Monomoy and Chatham. This is a straightforward conservation success that has also created conflict, since seals compete with fisheries and attract predators.

White sharks. Following the seals, white sharks began aggregating off the outer Cape in numbers that were not seen in living memory. Researchers now tag and track dozens of individuals each season. Massachusetts recorded a fatal attack in 2018, the state's first in more than 80 years, and beach management, public messaging, and detection buoys have been reorganised around the animals' presence. It is one of the clearest examples anywhere of a predator returning because its prey did.

Section 05

Mammals Of Massachusetts

• White-tailed deer: reduced to a remnant and now abundant, with very high densities in suburbs and on the islands where hunting is limited.
• Black bear: absent from most of the state for a century, now over 4,500 animals and expanding eastward toward the Boston suburbs.
• Moose: recolonised from the north in the 1980s and 1990s and now a small population in the central and western uplands.
• Coyote: arrived in the 1950s, larger than western coyotes with some wolf ancestry, and now in nearly every town including urban Boston.
• Bobcat and fisher: both recovered strongly. Fishers have moved into suburbs and are among the few predators that regularly kill porcupines.
• Beaver: extirpated by 1750 and absent for roughly 180 years, returning in the 20th century and now abundant enough that beaver flooding is a routine municipal issue.
• River otter, mink, weasels, striped skunk, raccoon, opossum, woodchuck, gray squirrel, flying squirrels, muskrat, cottontail: all common.
• New England cottontail: the region's only native rabbit, now scarce and displaced by the introduced eastern cottontail, requiring dense young shrubland that mature forest has replaced.
• Bats: nine species, with little brown and northern long-eared bats reduced by more than 90 percent by white-nose syndrome. See do bats hibernate.

Absent: gray wolf, eastern cougar, elk, and caribou. A cougar was confirmed in Massachusetts by DNA in the 1990s and tracks in 2011, almost certainly dispersers rather than residents.

Section 06

Birds Of Massachusetts

More than 500 species have been recorded, a very high total for a small state, driven by the coast and by Cape Cod acting as a migration trap.

• Beach nesters: Massachusetts holds a substantial share of the Atlantic coast piping plover population, protected by beach closures and predator exclosures, and the recovery of plovers here is one of the more visible conservation efforts in the state.
• Terns: roseate terns, federally endangered, nest at Bird and Ram islands in Buzzards Bay in one of the most important colonies in the western Atlantic, alongside common and least terns.
• Seabirds and pelagics: shearwaters, storm-petrels, jaegers, and phalaropes offshore, with Stellwagen Bank trips producing large numbers in summer.
• Grassland and heathland birds: Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard hold northern harrier, short-eared owl, and grasshopper sparrow in heathland maintained by fire and mowing. The heath hen, a subspecies of greater prairie-chicken, survived on Martha's Vineyard until 1932 and then went extinct, one of the best-documented extinctions in American history.
• Raptors: bald eagle restored beginning at Quabbin in the 1980s, peregrine falcon on buildings and traprock cliffs, osprey abundant on Cape Cod and Westport after DDT recovery.
• Rarities: Cape Cod and the islands concentrate migrants and storm-driven vagrants, and Massachusetts records more European strays than most of the country.

Section 07

Reptiles, Amphibians, And Fish

Massachusetts has around 25 reptile and 21 amphibian species. Two snakes are venomous and both are rare.

Snakes: 14 species. The timber rattlesnake survives at a small number of den sites and is state endangered, and the northern copperhead is similarly restricted to a few locations. A proposed timber rattlesnake refuge population on an island in Quabbin Reservoir in 2016 provoked substantial public opposition and was paused, which illustrates how difficult snake conservation is even in a conservation-minded state.

Turtles: Plymouth redbelly turtle, a federally endangered population confined to a small number of ponds in southeastern Massachusetts, plus bog turtle, wood turtle, spotted turtle, Blanding's turtle, eastern box turtle, diamondback terrapin at the northern edge of its range, and four sea turtle species offshore.

Amphibians: marbled, spotted, blue-spotted, and four-toed salamanders, eastern newt, plus eastern spadefoot, wood frog, spring peeper, and gray treefrog. Vernal pool protection is unusually strong in Massachusetts, which certifies individual pools for legal protection.

Fish: Atlantic cod is the state fish and the collapsed fishery. Also striped bass, bluefish, and winter flounder inshore, river herring and shad running into coastal streams where dam removal is the main restoration tool, plus shortnose and Atlantic sturgeon, both federally listed, in the Connecticut and Merrimack systems. Brook trout persist in cold western streams.

Section 08

Dangerous Animals In Massachusetts

• Ticks: the leading risk by a wide margin. Massachusetts has among the highest Lyme disease rates in the country, and Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard are historic centres for babesiosis and tularemia.
• White-tailed deer: thousands of vehicle collisions a year and the primary host for adult ticks.
• Great white sharks: present off the outer Cape from roughly June through October. One fatal attack occurred in 2018, the first in over 80 years. Avoid swimming near seals, stay in shallow water, and heed beach closures.
• Timber rattlesnake and copperhead: both rare, localised, and protected. Bites are exceptionally unusual.
• Coyote: attacks on people are very rare; pets are the realistic concern.
• Black bear: no fatal attacks in Massachusetts. Bird feeders and unsecured trash drive nearly all conflicts.
• Cold water and rip currents: these injure and kill far more people on Massachusetts beaches than sharks do.

Section 09

Endangered And Protected Species

Massachusetts is unusual in that its main pressures are not clearing land but the consequences of density and of a changing ocean: fragmentation by roads and development, sea level rise drowning salt marsh, loss of young shrubland as forest matures, recreational pressure on beach-nesting birds, and a warming Gulf of Maine reshuffling marine species. Its conservation tools are correspondingly unusual, including one of the strongest vernal pool protection systems in the country and active management of beaches and heathland.

Section 10

Where To See Wildlife In Massachusetts

• Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary: humpback, finback, and minke whales by boat from Boston, Gloucester, or Provincetown.
• Cape Cod Bay, spring: right whales feeding close to shore, viewable from Provincetown with strict approach limits.
• Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge and Chatham: gray seal haul-outs numbering in the thousands, plus shorebirds and terns.
• Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, Plum Island: shorebirds, snowy owls in winter, and salt marsh.
• Quabbin Reservoir: bald eagles, loons, bear, and a large protected watershed forest.
• Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard: heathland harriers, short-eared owls, and rare moths.
• Mount Greylock and the Berkshires: high-elevation forest birds, moose, and bear.