Barnegat Bay's watershed is part of the larger New Jersey Pinelands, a region dominated by upland pine-oak forests and mixed hardwood-pine-cedar forested wetlands.  The conservation of large tracts of contiguous Pinelands habitat and the minimization of fragmentation are issues of concern.  Human development has the direct impact of removing existing natural habitats as well as fragmenting the habitat that remains into smaller pieces.  Devlopment and heavily travelled road corridors often serve as barriers or hazards to wildlife movement, facilitate exotic/noxious plant invasions and alter 'natural' disturbance regimes.

Contiguous forest areas (i.e. not divided by roads) were delineated by CRSSA to further examine the issue of forest fragmentation.  Paved roads and existing developments were used as a boundary to delineate the individual patches of contiguous forest habitat.  The forests of the eastern half of the Barnegat Bay watershed are severly fragmented,  constrasting very strongly with the largely unfragmented forests of the upper watershed regions.  The Barnegat Bay watershed contains several individual forest tracts of large size that are of statewide significance.