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Animal & Plant Diversity

GOSA’s focus is to protect land and water that support a diversity of wildlife and plant habitats. Certain species require large blocks of land which include rocky ridges and glacial moraine, deep interior forests, forest edge habitats, shrubby early successional forests, grasslands, wetlands, fresh and salt water marshes, ponds, streams vernal pools, seeps, sedge tussock swamps, forested peatland, shrub thicket, bogs, and poor fens. Each of these habitats supports a wide variety of plants and animals.

Below is a listing of plants and animals identified on land that GOSA helped to protect.

Endangered species:

blue-winged warbler, sedge wren, American bittern, northern harrier, sharp-shinned hawk, common nighthawk, pied-billed grebe, yellow-breasted chat

Threatened species:

American kestrel, peregrine falcon, broad-winged hawk, great egret, snowy egret

Special Concern species:

brown thrasher, bobolink, eastern meadowlark, pileated woodpecker, great horned owl, barred owl, red-tailed hawk, rough-legged hawk, merlin, American woodcock, wood duck, wild turkey, eastern bluebird, little blue heron, glossy ibis, common loon (flyover, eastern box turtle, hognose snake, early wrinkle-leaved goldenrod, upland boneset

Connecticut Critical Ecosystem:

Atlantic white cedar swamp, pitch pine forest

Other interesting animal species:

great blue and green heron, kingfisher, bufflehead, common merganser, red-breasted merganser, American eel, alewife, chain and redfin pickerel fish, common and golden shiner fish, creek chub sucker fish, pumpkinseed fish, fairy shrimp, marbled and spotted salamanders, wood and green frogs, fingernail clams, mayfly and caddisfly ,yellow spotted turtle, painted turtle, snapping turtles, bobcat, mink, weasel, beaver, otter, fisher cat, black rat snake, black racer snake, and New England cottontail (until recently a candidate endangered species)

Other interesting plant species:

pagoda dogwood, tulip, hemlock, hackberry, chestnut oak, red oak, scarlet oak, white oak, red cedar, shagbark hickory, sassafras, black gum, cherry birch, gray birch, yellow birch, elder, American beech, swamp azalea, mountain laurel, sheep laurel, witch hazel, wintergreen, bayberry, dewberry, spicebush, huckleberry, partridgeberry, highbush blueberry, summer sweet, wintergreen, downy rattlesnake orchid, golden saxifrage, carnivorous round-leaf sun-dews, carnivorous spathulate sun-dews, yellow and purple-flowered carnivorous bladderwort, large cranberries, yellow-flowered bullhead lilies, Virginia chain ferns, mermaid weeds, ebony spleenwort, broom sedge, feather fern, deer tongue, cinquefoils, sensitive plant, Indian tobacco, pearly everlasting, violets, winterberry, blue verbain, lady slipper orchid, Appalachian polypody fern, little bluestem, switch grass, tussock, broom and Pennsylvania sedge, rush, purple lovegrass, shiny club moss, prehistoric club mosses, appressed club moss, and sphagnum moss