Summer 2021
News from Staying Connected
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July 2021 | In this issue: Highlighting SCI Partner Accomplishments |
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New Camera Trap Network Established in Adirondacks |
Last summer, the Roosevelt Wild Life Station and Adirondack Ecological Center at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF), and Northwood School (Lake Placid) launched the Adirondack Inventory & Monitoring (AIM) Camera Trap Network. The Network is a collaborative effort involving university and secondary school faculty and students, biological field stations, environmental organizations, and state agencies throughout northern New York State. Using a robust multispecies survey protocol, developed by Dr. Alexej Sirén and based on six years of field research, the Network is collecting wildlife occurrence data in Adirondack Park, Tug Hill, and the St. Lawrence Valley with the goal of filling a data gap for many terrestrial mammals in this large and remote region.
A novel aspect of this effort is the collection of temperature and snow depth data at each camera station – important abiotic conditions that will help us to better understand distributions and range shifts of species of conservation concern in the northeast that may be most impacted by climate change (e.g.,snowshoe hare, American marten, fisher, moose). The AIM Network will provide key landscape-scale data that will be useful for organizations and state agencies focused on wildlife conservation and management of public and private lands.
The Network is currently developing their web page, but you can follow them on Twitter @AIMcameratrap. As their Network continues to grow, please consider joining as a partner!
For more information, contact Paul Jensen, Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental and Forest Biology at SUNY-ESF, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Regional Wildlife Program Manager for the Adirondacks and Lake Champlain Basin, and SCI steering committee member.
Photo Credit: Dr. Stephen Langdon
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Highlights from the Three-Borders Region |
The Three-Borders Linkage, an area of more than 2.3 million hectares (5.7 million acres) in Maine, New Brunswick, and Quebec, is widely recognized as a vital connection between Maine and the extensive forests of the Québec’s Gaspé Peninsula to the north and New Brunswick to the east. Although much of the region is forested, roads and other forms of development are significant threats to the long-term movement of wildlife through the area.
Representatives from Indigenous communities, government agencies, and non-government organizations are working to mitigate the effects of the Trans-Canada Highway, called Highway 85 in Québec and Highway 2 in New Brunswick. They are also collaborating to advance conservation objectives throughout the linkage, including the Restigouche Wilderness Waterway.
In Québec, for example, Horizon-Nature Bas-Saint-Laurent has organized a committee with 20 stakeholders to provide support in the identification of a network of ecological corridors near Highway 85. Up to 30 crossing structures are expected to be constructed in coming years as Highway 85 is widened.
Across the border in New Brunswick, the Nature Conservancy of Canada - Atlantic (NCC), Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society - New Brunswick (CPAWS), and Two Countries, One Forest are providing input to increase connectivity outcomes for the Government of New Brunswick’s Nature Legacy protected areas establishment project. So far, 48,000 hectares of candidate protected areas have been identified in the Three-Borders region.
Representatives from NCC and CPAWS are also working closely with a University of New Brunswick graduate student to guide her study of species movement potential across the province, including the Three-Borders region.
The Echo Foundation, based in Montreal, is providing critical funding for Three-Borders work in Québec and New Brunswick.
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Successes with Landowner Woodlot Program in Northern Greens |
In Vermont, like much of the Northeast region of the US, the majority of forest lands are privately owned. In the Northern Greens linkage, Cold Hollow to Canada (CHC), a regional conservation partnership, has worked within a seven town region to support individual and family forest owners and community members to work together through a self-directed, grassroots approach to collectively protect forests.
The CHC Woodlots Program works to engage groups of landowners who own contiguous or nearly contiguous forested properties, allowing each to understand how their management activities contribute to wildlife habitat and forest resilience on a landscape scale. The neighbor-to-neighbor collaboration results in a cumulative impact which is more significant compared to the effect one property owner could have on their own.
Since 2013, CHC has orchestrated successful Woodlots programs in four communities, involving 80 landowners managing over 13,000 forest acres. Each group meets quarterly to share food and stroll the land of one member as they discuss stewardship goals and techniques and learn from guests who provide insight into climate change forest adaptation strategies, methods for improving wildlife habitat, and various other management and natural history topics. In addition to acting as a convener for these gatherings, CHC has worked to build a foundation of trust and community connections among participating landowners through their engagement with this program. These relationships have been essential in connecting landowners with other programs and resources. For example, 40 landowners have enrolled almost 10K acres in Natural Resource Conservation Service stewardship incentives programs over the past 4 years, and seven Woodlots landowners donated conservation easements on about 3K acres of land.
Cold Hollow to Canada is in the process of documenting the Woodlots Program process and strategies in an online, interactive toolkit for others who wish to use similar strategies to engage neighboring landowners. This toolkit should be available through the CHC webpage in 2022.
Photo Credit: Liza Morse
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Maine Turtle Roadkill Survey |
Maine Audubon, working with partners at the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW) and the Maine Department of Transportation (MaineDOT), and with funding from the Maine Outdoor Heritage Trust, has completed data collection on a 3-year community science project looking at turtle mortality on roadways. Trained surveyors walked their routes at least 3 times during the turtle active season from May through September, and data on all vertebrate roadkill on survey routes and turtle roadkill or turtles crossing roads anywhere in Maine were documented in iNaturalist.
One hundred thirty-eight volunteers from all across the state were trained, and 63 of them followed through to survey one or more pre-selected road segments in search of turtles on roadways in 127 towns in all 16 counties of Maine.
In all, 1120 wildlife observations were documented by volunteers over the 3 years of the project, including 286 turtles. These observations included all seven native turtle species found in Maine—Snapping Turtle, Painted Turtle, Musk Turtle, Eastern Box Turtle (state-Endangered), Blanding’s Turtle (state-Endangered), Spotted Turtle (state-Threatened), and Wood Turtle (state Species of Special Concern)—as well as several observations of turtles nesting along road edges.
Maine Audubon is now working with a student in GIS at Bowdoin College to identify any landscape or roadway features (i.e. speed limits, land cover types, etc.) that characterize the areas where turtle mortality occurs most frequently in order to refine the road segment selection model and to work with towns and MaineDOT to proactively work to minimize turtle mortality.
Photo Credit: Ari van den Akker
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Quebec's Ecological Corridors Project Continues |
After celebrating the completion of Phase 1 of the Ecological Corridors project in 2020, the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) is pleased to announce the start of Phase 2 of this innovative initiative that promotes the health and safety of Quebecers, animals and plants.
The collaboration received $1.5 million from Action-Climat Québec, a program from the Québec Ministère de l'Environnement et de la Lutte contre les changements climatiques / Ministry of the Environment and the Fight Against Climate Change for development between 2021-2024. In this phase, the project has ten partner organizations within eleven regions of Quebec who are committed to a collaborative approach to land use planning in order to increase protection of lands within ecological corridors. The initiative leadership is in the process of developing a governance structure for their partnership to ensure coherence and ability to respond effectively to the challenges of different scales of work (local, regional, provincial) and to help the regional project managers carry out their mandates.
The initiative will build on the previous successes to engage and support the action of municipalities, citizens, woodlot owners, farmers, land use planning experts and local partners, all of whom play a strategic role in land use. This partnership is also made possible with funding from the Woodcock Foundation.
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Berkshire Wildlife Linkage Catalyzes Land Protection Across Three States |
The Berkshire Wildlife Linkage (also known as the Green Mountains to Hudson Highlands Linkage) was able to catalyze the permanent protection of over 1,000 acres across three states thanks to a generous grant from the Jessie B. Cox Charitable Trust. The Berkshire Wildlife Linkage (BWL) was awarded $75,000 which was used over the course of three years to cover due diligence costs for land protected in the linkage that was either priority core habitat or a priority for connections between already-protected lands. In order to qualify, the land had to have a bargain sale component, or be donated outright along with the connectivity component.
This funding was a key piece to expanding the BWL work from its initial focus within Massachusetts to more fully incorporate partners within the linkage but across state borders in Connecticut, Vermont, and New York. Thanks to significant input and effort by the ranking committee, BWL partners were able to help land trusts fill in the gaps within the BWL which is an important connection that reaches between southern Vermont and eastern New York.
For more information about this project, contact Laura Marx.
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Have a story idea for the next SCI newsletter? Contact witham.erin@gmail.com |
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The Staying Connected Initiative brings together a unique assemblage of government, non-government and academic partners to conserve, restore, and sustain landscape connections across the Northern Appalachian/Acadian Forest region. We envision an ecologically interconnected and resilient landscape across the Northern Appalachian/Acadian Forest region of the eastern U.S. and Canada that sustains healthy lands, waters, wildlife and vibrant human communities. |
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