There are right ways and wrong ways to pick up a snapping turtle. Standing in hip waders in a beaver wetland below the Norton Brook Dam at the Lands of The Watershed Center, herpetologist Jim Andrews demonstrates a right way that keeps both turtle and holder safe. Around him, workshop participants lean in for a close look at the snapper Jim holds by its stout hind legs. As employees of the Vermont Agency of Transportation (VTrans), they’re more likely than most to put this skill to good use.
Each year for more than a decade, Jim has helped teach a training course for VTrans staff—called Vermont Habitats and Highways—in which participants learn about the threats to wildlife posed by Vermont’s road system and explore potential solutions to those threats. During the course, Jim helps teach four day-long trainings involving classroom time and field trips to varied wildlife habitats, where students observe first-hand some of the myriad local wildlife species impacted by roads, through risks ranging from vehicle strikes to improperly installed culverts that inhibit aquatic migration.
Which brings us back to the big snapping turtle in Jim’s hands. Jim explains that mature female snappers (and other turtle species) leave their watery home in springtime to find open, sunny high ground with easy digging, where they can dig a hole and lay their eggs. That journey may involve one or more turtle-paced road crossings. And since the roadsides themselves often offer the open, sun-drenched, dig-able habitat they’re looking for, females may dig their nests right there, a choice that puts them and their hatchlings at further risk.
During the four days of the Vermont Habitats and Highways course, students learn about a wide range of wildlife species impacted by roads—from bobcats to brook trout. One full day is dedicated to reptiles and amphibians which, more than any other wildlife group, are most vulnerable to population decline and disappearance as a direct result of road mortality. In recent years, Jim has held this day of field study at the 1,001-acre Lands of the Watershed Center because of its exceptional habitat for a variety of reptile and amphibian species.
Jim began the day at North Street in New Haven—a road that separates the Lands of the Watershed Center from an extensive wetland to the west. Jim’s message about the high mortality risk of this important wildlife crossing is driven home by the discovery of a dead Eastern ratsnake—a rare species listed as threatened in Vermont—in the road. The students make other, more uplifting findings, including several spotted and red-backed salamanders, in the forest habitat east of the road crossing.
Jim then leads the students to turtle traps he set up the night before in Norton Brook Reservoir and nearby beaver ponds. With the help of research assistant Kate Kelly and a few eager students who don the extra pairs of waders Jim has brought along, Jim extracts several painted turtles and snapping turtles from the traps.
After checking the black-rubber-covered “snake hotels” Jim placed on the land to monitor snake populations (empty, likely due to the warmth of the day), Jim and the students visit a shallow depression in the forest floor. Though dry now, it’s full of water in springtime and into the summer season. Jim explains the importance of such ephemeral vernal pools, which provide fish-free habitat for frog and salamander eggs and larvae.
In the afternoon, they drive a few miles north to the two Monkton Wildlife Crossing underpasses beneath the busy thoroughfare of Monkton Road. Built in 2015, these hugely successful underpasses allow wildlife—from salamanders to black bears—to cross safely from upland forest to wetland habitat. Post-construction monitoring estimates that the underpasses resulted in a whopping 93% reduction in amphibian mortalities, which had numbered in the thousands during spring migration before the underpasses were built.
The project is a shining example of effective collaboration on behalf of wildlife among state and federal agencies (both VTrans and the US Fish and Wildlife Service contributed funds), local non-profits, and community members (Monkton Conservation Commission and Lewis Creek Association tirelessly shepherded the project and raised more than $100,000 in private donations). In 2017, the Monkton Wildlife Crossing received an Environmental Excellence award from the Federal Highway Administration.
Jim is quick to praise Monkton resident and VTrans Environmental Resources Coordinator Chris Slesar for his key role in both the Monkton Wildlife Crossing and in developing the idea for the Vermont Highways and Habitats training course. He also praises the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife for partnering with Chris and the Vermont Agency of Transportation in developing and promoting the classes. The course received its own accolades in 2014, with a distinguished achievement award at the Northeastern Transportation and Wildlife Conference.
The buzz about the course at regional transportation conferences led to a request for Jim, along with environmental consultant Jed Merrow and videographer Vince Franke, to create a training video that replicates what is taught in the course. The video will also showcase what different Northeastern states are doing to mitigate road crossing mortality and habitat fragmentation, looking at what worked and, importantly, what didn’t. Funded by The Nature Conservancy, the video’s production is underway.
After their four training days, the VTRANs students have the option of completing another tier of the course, during which they explore engineering challenges related to wildlife crossings. As a tool for positive change, the course, Jim says, has been really successful. He notes that some of the course participants have worked their way up the ladder in transportation agencies and conservation organizations and are project managers or administrators, either here in Vermont or in other states.
“The idea,” Jim says, “is to build a culture of support for wildlife movement and habitat connectivity.”
