Clam Cove Reserve, a 22-acre wetland parcel adjacent to the Long Beach Township Field Station in Holgate, has transformed from a peninsula into an island over the past few years as erosion created what the municipality calls “the cut.” According to the township, which acquired the land through its open space trust fund and in a cost sharing agreement with Ocean County’s Natural Lands Trust, “This also formed because the struggling ecology could not keep up with the changing environment.”

To be specific, officials stated, “Species such as the Atlantic ribbed mussel and the saltmarsh cordgrass Spartina…