Camryn Woods is a reporter with the Community News Service, part of the University of Vermont’s Reporting & Documentary Storytelling program.

MONKTON — Every day as cars, buses and other motor vehicles drive over Monkton Road, a high-traffic street that connects the towns of Monkton and Vergennes, a culvert-like tunnel underneath the road prevents 80% of small-bodied organisms from being run over.

The tunnel — Monkton’s first and only wildlife crossing — is intended to help amphibians like spotted salamanders, wood frogs and spring peepers reach their breeding grounds. Many amphibians reside in wooded, upland habitats for the majority of their lives but migrate to wetlands during their breeding seasons to lay eggs.

Unfortunately, many roads in Vermont bisect the two ecosystems, forcing amphibians to embark on a journey across busy streets in order to reproduce.

Wildlife crossings like the one in Monkton are often expensive and require evidence of significant animal mortality to be considered by state and federal grants. So in the early 2000s, Monkton community members conducted on-the-ground research to justify the project. 

Volunteers from the town of Monkton, the Vermont Agency of Transportation (VTrans) and the Lewis Creek Association, a non-profit that works with Vermonters to preserve natural landscapes, visited the street at night (when amphibians are most active) to note species and the number of mortalities. In just two nights, they found over a thousand dead amphibians.

“The Monkton area is very biodiverse,” said Kate Kelly, program manager at the Lewis Creek Association. “It has to do with being in the Champlain Valley, but also being on the edge of multiple habitat types and zones.” 

Kelly added that two unusual species were found in the areas surrounding the designated crossing: the blue spotted salamander and the four-toed salamander. “Having those unusual species there was helpful for getting funding,” Kelly said.

The crossing, which ended up costing $342,397, was completed in 2018. It was mainly funded by a U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration grant, state wildlife grant and Lewis Creek Association fundraising, according to Kelly.

The Monkton wildlife crossing also served as the site of a unique 12-year-long research study published in May.

The research was conducted by University of Vermont scientists and assessed amphibian mortality before and after the tunnel’s construction — one of the firsts of its kind. The results were surprising, said Matthew Marcelino, ecologist and lead author for the study. 

“We figured they’d be effective, but we didn’t realize how effective they would be,” Marcelino said. Along with the 80% overall reduced mortality statistic, they found that mortality of non-climbing amphibians decreased by 94% as a result of the crossing. 

Marcelino hopes that the results of the study will encourage people to invest more in wildlife crossings. “It’s important to have evidence to get things funded so that stakeholders feel comfortable with the government disbursing funds to these types of projects,” Marcelino said. “And this really did that.”

Not to mention, amphibians play an important role in local food webs, act as good indicators of environmental health and support human health. 

“They serve both as predators and prey. So they provide a lot of food for mammals, birds, reptiles, et cetera, but they’re also preying on things like mosquitoes and other pests — insects that we humans don’t like,” Marcelino said.

The University of Vermont study came out at the same time as a large wildlife crossing project on Route 2 and Interstate-89 in Western Waterbury was pulled back. The project, which had won $1.6 million in funding from the Federal Highway Administration in 2023, would have cost around $50 million in total, according to Joe Flynn, secretary of VTrans.

The 2023 grant provided momentum for the project, but the state would have needed to apply for a much bigger one to cover the cost. Unfortunately, only $75 million was available for the country, and Vermont didn’t receive part of the funding.

Though the project was retracted due to the lack of funding, Flynn said that the decision to cease looking for grant money was “not intended to diminish the importance of wildlife crossings” and that Vermonters understood the need for them.

Marcelino said that wildlife crossings can save residents money in the long term. “If people are hitting deer or moose or bear, or a turkey, that is a lot of money being spent to either fix the vehicle or have first responders respond,” Marcelino said.

“There is a nexus of wildlife crossings to highway safety, and if that nexus is the nexus that is promoted … then I think there is the possibility that these crossings will be continued in the future,” Flynn said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Wildlife crossings save animals’ lives, but at what cost to Vermonters?.

Kate Kampner and Camryn Woods are reporters with the Community News Service, part of the University of Vermont’s Reporting & Documentary Storytelling program.

ENOSBURG — The percentage of Vermont residents who make an outing out of observing birds is greater than any other state in the nation, according to the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department. It’s no wonder — the state’s diverse ecosystems, from lakeside wetlands to hardwood forests, make it a hotspot for a variety of birds. 

For Enosburg resident Bridget Butler, these outings have defined both a lifestyle and a business. Self-monikered the “Bird Diva,” Butler has been practicing and teaching a new form of birding for the last 11 years called “Slow Birding.”

The act of birding gained traction in the 1800s when individuals would go out and physically collect specimens. Nowadays, traditional birding typically consists of collecting the names of unique or interesting birds that one has observed. In some cases, it has taken a competitive form where birders try to be the first one to spot a species. 

Butler’s Slow Birding is the most recent evolution in the activity’s lifespan. Butler said her form of birding is more “intentional,” and invites birders to slow down and be present with the birds while also connecting with the landscape. 

“In traditional birding, we don’t talk about how birds make us feel or what they remind us of or where birds can take us in our own life experience,” she said. 

Her business, Butler said, stemmed from her move to Vermont and from smaller birding gigs she operated while working for the Vermont Audubon Society. After eight years of traditional birding experience, she realized that she had been yearning for a more contemplative practice.

“I followed what felt good and what helped me feel like my most authentic self,” she said. “So, that was sitting in place. That was watching birds for longer periods of time on a regular basis in the same spot over and over again. I wanted to linger.”

Butler hosts Friday morning coffee sessions, Slow Birding retreats, and birding events throughout the year.

During her outings, Butler follows a three-part framework. The first part allows her participants to become aware of the birds on the landscape by encouraging them to describe what they see as a group, rather than asking them to immediately identify a bird. 

During the second part of her outings, Butler asks participants to sit alone in nature for 45 minutes and journal about what they notice. She gives them prompts but lets them decide what they want to do with the time. 

The third part brings them back as a group to discuss their observations. Butler said that this framework lets members of all birding skills participate equally. 

“I’m constantly surprised by how it moves people,” Butler said. 

Erin Creley, a St. Albans resident, has been attending Butler’s bird walks, weekend retreats and coffee talks for the last five years. She found Slow Birding during the 2020 pandemic when her work in healthcare felt overwhelming. 

“Slow Birding has given me a language to describe the feelings I’m having when I’m in nature; the joy that I have, the awe,” Creley said.

This practice isn’t without its difficulties though. Any outdoor activity is subject to the unpredictability of nature.

This July, for example, Butler cancelled her second Slow Birding outing after air quality levels reached above 160, which is considered “unhealthy” by the U.S. Air Quality Index.

“Climate has its way,” Butler said. “When you lead people, their care and safety is in your hands.”

As a result of these weather events, Butler now has thresholds for air quality, rain, snow and extreme heat and cold. 

Fortunately, Butler said that she hasn’t had to cancel an event due to flooding simply due to the timing and location of her outings. If she does encounter a conflict in the future, though, she always has a backup date planned.

Despite the unpredictability of the weather, Butler said her membership is strong. Along with connecting with the landscape, participants have also voiced an appreciation for the community-building aspect of the birding outings. 

“It was great to breathe and talk birds with people around me,” said Diane Brown, a frequent birder and participant of Butler’s sessions. “They were all there for the same reason.”

Brown said the sessions take her back to an old-school mindset that prompted her love for birding. Brown’s been birding for almost 40 years and has seen firsthand how birding culture has changed over time. 

“It’s no longer about the birds,” she said in regards to traditional birding culture which she felt has been overtaken by competition and technology. “I like how (Butler) encouraged our own experience rather than the experience of computer technology,” Brown said.

With Butler, Brown said “It’s about where I stand, what I’m looking at, what I’m hearing. Who I’m with.” 

Despite having her outings and retreats in Vermont, Butler doesn’t limit her teachings to just the one state. She also offers online Slow Birding courses, which has allowed birders from across the country to access her methodologies. 

Joy Rochester, a North Carolina resident, is one of them. She took her first course with Butler a year and a half ago, which consisted of six two-hour-long classes — one of which she participated in during a trip to Arizona.

“It was really neat to observe what was around me in Arizona, because I’m not used to those birds and those sounds. Even the air around me [was] different,” Rochester said. “I realized then I could transfer what I was learning to a lot of different places and be better at sensing things around me.” 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont’s ‘Bird Diva’ introduces a new form of birding.

Camryn Woods is a reporter with the Community News Service, part of the University of Vermont’s Reporting & Documentary Storytelling program.

BURLINGTON — On a warm Sunday evening in June, Margaret Skinner crouched near a young honey locust tree and plucked away the net of weeds that surrounded it. Her efforts, she knew, could help the sapling breathe by reducing its competition for nutrients and water.

This honey locust is just one of 600 trees that Skinner and her team of volunteers nurture throughout the summer. Most of the trees, having traveled in a tractor trailer truck from Oregon, will spend their most vulnerable years being cared for in the South Burlington–based tree nursery called Branch Out Burlington.

Once they graduate from the nursery three to four years later, the trees will provide shade, carbon sequestration and valuable habitats throughout the state of Vermont.

Branch Out Burlington, affectionately referred to by its members as “BOB,” is dedicated to enhancing the urban forest in Burlington, engaging community members through events like tree walks and weeding days and hosting an annual tree sale. 

Skinner helped found the group in 1996 when the city lacked resources to care for its trees. Two years later, she was granted access to land that would become the nursery — at the time, stocked with only 40 trees, according to Skinner — which is currently located off of Shelburne Road in the University of Vermont Horticulture Farm.

“I don’t want to just plant trees. I want to make sure the trees that get planted in the community get cared for, because they weren’t and they were dying,” said Skinner, who also works full-time as an entomologist at the University of Vermont.

This care, Skinner said, includes removing weeds, selectively removing branches to improve health, securing trees in place with wooden stakes and watering them. Young trees can also be easily damaged by outdoor equipment like weedwhackers and lawnmowers, which should be avoided around them, she said.

That Sunday evening, Skinner was joined by the president of Branch Out Burlington, Jacob Holzberg-Pill, and the organization’s web designer, Nathan Hoffmann, who are part of the board’s eight to nine members.

When he found Branch Out Burlington, “I was looking for things to do that were outside, that were tree related, that were part of the community,” said Holzberg-Pill, who had moved to Burlington with his 1-year-old son. “I contacted Margaret, and I was like, “Hey, could I come help out?’”

Hoffmann joined the organization three years ago, when he was looking for volunteer opportunities as a graphic designer at OnLogic, a computer hardware manufacturing company. After attending multiple weeding events, he started going to the board meetings, cementing his long-term involvement.

“I wanted to learn more. There’s a wealth of knowledge here that you’d never believe. It was just such a cool opportunity to get more involved and to be a part of the community, doing something that was much bigger than me,” Hoffmann said.

On Tuesday, July 8, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., Branch Out Burlington held a Weeding Bee in the nursery, which is open to the public every second Tuesday during the summer months. Its 20-some attendees chatted, cleared weeds from tree beds and puzzled over iPhone pictures of unidentified damage on folks’ front yard trees.

Once the weeding was done, Skinner provided free pizza and homemade cookies to volunteers. A ticket raffle was held, with prizes ranging from urban forestry books to a handmade wooden birdhouse.

“It’s a really special, fun way to get away from the work week and meet wonderful community members of all ages and from all over,” Hoffmann said. 

The Essex Junction Tree Advisory Committee, established by the city council in 2013, also makes an effort to be at the Weeding Bees. They have two rows of trees specifically allocated to the city, but volunteers help care for the entire nursery. 

“It was a win-win for us because we could, with our budget, be able to really increase the number of trees we could get into the community,” said Nick Meyer, chair of the committee.

Weeding Bees and Branch Out Burlington’s other volunteer opportunities, like pruning and grafting workshops and tree planting events, make urban trees economically viable for cities. 

When trees are bought older and immediately ready to plant in urban environments, they’re much more expensive, according to Holzberg-Pill — potentially around $500 each. 

Instead, Branch Out Burlington buys its trees from Oregon nurseries for $50 at younger ages with the knowledge that they’ll be stewarded by volunteers for a few years until they’re ready to move. 

Branch Out Burlington’s July 2025 newsletter wrote that it give away hundreds of trees to local schools, towns and non-profits that have the means to take care of them every year. The ability to fund projects like this comes from donations and tree sale profits. 

Green Mountain Farm-to-School, a nonprofit that builds healthy school environments, the Intervale Community Farm, a Burlington-based agricultural center, and Perkins Pier in Burlington, for example, have received tree donations, according to the newsletter.

Going forward, Skinner hopes to continue developing Branch Out Burlington’s media presence. “We are lucky to get 20 people up here to help take care of these trees once a month,” she said. “As I look around the nursery, I could spend every day, all day, and there would still be work to do.”

Urban trees are becoming more important as the climate warms, according to Meyer. 

“If we didn’t have any trees on all our sidewalks and open areas, days like today would be even hotter,” Meyer said. Cooling the temperature in cities and slowing rainfall in tree canopies are forms of stormwater management, and green spaces can give a visually softening effect to concrete environments, Meyer said.

“Hopefully these trees are going to be here for generations,” he said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Where do city trees come from? Meet the people behind Burlington’s tree nursery.

Camryn Woods is a reporter with the Community News Service, part of the University of Vermont’s Reporting & Documentary Storytelling program.

A new logging plan for the Green Mountain National Forest could harvest almost 5 million cubic feet of timber, or enough trees to fill 5,000 school buses. 

The Telephone Gap Integrated Resource project was approved on June 13 after seven years of assessment. It will manage 72,000 acres of federal, state and private land primarily in the towns of Brandon, Chittenden, Goshen, Killington, Mendon, Pittsfield and Pittsford, according to the U.S. Forest Service’s Final Decision Notice, a document outlining the new plan. 

The Forest Service said in its final plan that the Telephone Gap project would improve wildlife habitat, restore soils and wetlands, allow for prescribed burns and trail building and increase logging. But the project has received both praise and pushback from environmental organizations in Vermont over the last few years of its development.

During its commenting phase, the project received more feedback than any other Forest Service project in Vermont, according to advocates, with over 2,300 public comments filed. The public attention pushed the Forest Service to conduct an analysis of the carbon output from the project, according to Zack Porter, executive director of Standing Trees, a nonprofit founded in 2020 to protect state and public lands in New England.

The carbon analysis revealed that the adopted plan will produce 255,000 metric tons, or about 3% of Vermont’s total output of carbon in 2022, according to the state’s most recent greenhouse gas inventory.

The issue over forest management has a long history in Vermont, where old-growth forests are glaringly scarce because clearcutting lost the state 80% of its trees before the 20th century. Today, less than 1% of New England’s forests are over 150 years old, according to Porter, and the Telephone Gap area contains many of these rare ecosystems.

Advocates are split over how these modern-day forests should be managed. Some advocates argue that forests should be left alone, while others say that they need some level of human intervention to remain ecologically healthy. 

For example, forests are healthier when they include multiple age classes, according to Steve Hagenbuch, senior forest program manager at Audubon, a nonprofit that focuses on protecting birds. The age classes include the tall trees of the canopy, the shorter trees of the mid-canopy, and the shrubs, saplings, and seedlings that cover the forest floor, which Hagenbuch said forests don’t necessarily have today. 

Lots of species, especially birds, rely on the complexity of mixed-age classes, according to Hagenbuch. When big trees fall and create gaps in the canopy, younger vegetation fills the forest floor. That’s where bird species Audubon considers under threat, like the wood thrush and black-throated blue warbler, like to nest. But now, he said, forests are generally less complex.

The Telephone Gap project’s Final Environmental Assessment, a document that evaluates its potential environmental impact, also found that there are fewer saplings and young trees than would be ideal in a well-managed forest. The forest plan includes using “commercial timber harvest, prescribed fire and other treatments” to open space for this young growth, according to the Final Decision Notice. 

However, these methods could also target old and mature trees that sequester carbon, increase the likelihood of introducing non-native invasive species through logging procedures and may affect air quality, according to the Final Environmental Assessment.

Vermont environmentalists worry about the harvesting of these older trees.

“We should be doing everything to protect this biodiversity hotspot,” said Annette Smith, executive director of Vermonters for a Clean Environment, a nonprofit that advocates for sustainable environmental and economic policies. “This is man’s hand in nature that should be left alone.”

But other environmental organizations like Audubon and Vermont Natural Resources Council, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting and enhancing Vermont’s natural environments, view the project as an opportunity for the Forest Service to try a “new model” on Vermont’s forests — one that encourages the flourishing of old growth while also diversifying age classes.

In April 2024, the two nonprofits, along with William Keeton, forestry professor at the University of Vermont, submitted formal comments to the Forest Service encouraging an alternative to the project plan. The Forest Service approved the revision, titled Alternative C, in December of 2024 and that was the version of the plan approved this summer.

Alternative C deferred 661 acres of forest that display old growth characteristics from logging. With an emphasis on ecological silviculture, it includes management practices like cutting trees and leaving them on the forest floor and strategically planting trees that are better suited for the climate, according to the Final Decision Notice. It would also reduce the need for constructing temporary logging-related roadways, making it less likely for invasive species to be carried into the area by logging machinery. 

“These would be opportunities to go in and do some management to accelerate these forests so that they move towards an old growth condition even more quickly than if they were left alone,” said Jamey Fidel, forest and wildlife program director at Vermont Natural Resources Council. 

But advocates like Chris Gish, community organizer at Standing Trees, said Alternative C is inadequate. 

“They went from about a 12,000 acre logging project to about an 11,000 acre logging project, so it was a small decrease in acreage,” Gish said. The carbon analysis revealed that the original plan would have produced 279,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, while Alternative C will produce 255,000 metric tons — about a 24,000-ton decrease.

Despite this, District Ranger Chris Mattrick of the U.S. Forest Service stated that the emissions were “not significant” in the final decision notice, citing that the trees in the Green Mountain National Forest would sequester that amount of carbon in about three months.

The plan will go into effect immediately and will be carried out over the next 15 years. In the meantime, Standing Trees is exploring legal options to challenge the project. The amount of public engagement the project received shows the public is prepared to advocate for their public lands, Porter said.

“We’ve changed the conversation about national forest management nationally,” Porter said.

Corrections: An earlier version of this story misspelled Zack Porter’s name; was incorrect about what made the number of public comments on the Telephone Gap plan historic; and misstated how long the plan would take to implement.

Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘Man’s hand in nature’: Forest Service passes controversial logging in Green Mountain National Forest.

Camryn Woods is a reporter with the Community News Service, part of the University of Vermont’s Reporting & Documentary Storytelling program.

COVENTRY — Vermont’s single landfill in Coventry receives hundreds of thousands of pounds of waste every year. Most of that amount is municipal waste — regular household and business trash like a Snicker’s wrapper or an old rocking chair.

In 2023 alone, a report by the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation showed Vermonters generated 540,000 tons of municipal solid waste. That’s equivalent to the weight of 1.5 Empire State Buildings.

Vermont’s solid waste plan has a goal to prevent 50% of the state’s waste stream from entering the landfill by reducing, recycling, repairing and composting. The closest the state came to meeting that number was in 2024, when 41% was diverted, according to Josh Kelly, solid waste program manager of the Waste Management and Prevention Division at DEC. 

In order to reach state goals, and connect Vermonters across the state, DEC created a new initiative called ReVT to be administered by Anne Bijur of the Solid Waste Division. 

The goals of the initiative are twofold, said Bijur, who supervises the materials management section of the division. 

“The first is to build this coalition around waste reduction, reuse and repair,” Bijur said. “The second is to create an open, inclusive network that supports practitioners and all Vermonters to participate.”

ReVT held its inaugural board meeting on May 13 over Microsoft Teams. The meeting was open to anyone interested in reuse and repair opportunities.

Forty-five participants logged on to learn from the program’s advisory committee and community presenters, according to its first newsletter. At the end, they were given the opportunity to engage in a 20-minute breakout group session to provide their feedback. 

Presenters at the meeting included a Front Porch Forum representative, the owner of a secondhand craft store in Burlington and a member of the Addison County Solid Waste Management District, which hosts repair fairs in Addison County every year.

Susan Alexander, the program coordinator of ReVT, recognized the broad community that the initiative involved. It was this diversity, she said in the meeting, that would make ReVT a success.

“There’s a lot of different angles to this,” Alexander said in a later phone call. “There’s the people who are trying to make a living doing it. There’s the folks who are trying to preserve our planet and conserve resources. There’s people who love fixing things. There are people who love going to thrift shops.” 

Through ReVT, Alexander hopes to amplify opportunities for reducing, reusing and repairing, cutting down on the amount of waste going to the Coventry landfill. These processes also conserve the natural resources used to make these products, Alexander said.

The program can also support a circular economy, Alexander said, where goods are recycled indefinitely, moving through many hands rather than ending up in the trash after the first use. 

“Instead of buying something at the store, then it breaks and goes to the landfill,” Alexander said, “(ReVT) is going to keep things looping through their life cycle as many times as possible.” 

The project is funded through a Solid Waste Infrastructure for Recycling grant provided by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2023. Of that grant, almost $17,000 was allocated to ReVT’s initiatives. Though the money is guaranteed now, it is unclear whether further funding will be provided after the conclusion of the contract in August 2026, Kelly said.

Regardless of funds, Kelly, Bijur and Alexander hope that ReVT will become a movement with a lasting impact. Their ultimate goal is to build support toward a coalition similar to the Composting Association of Vermont, which hosts a conference every spring. 

“Often there’s local solutions that can contribute to an economy,” Kelly said. “I just think people need that awareness to think about reuse repair first — not only for reducing waste, but for the people that it sustains.” 

Arianna Soloway, who presented at the ReVT meeting, is one of those people. She started a secondhand art store and community art space last November. Her store, The Makery, is located on 388 Pine St. in Burlington. 

“I’ve done a million different crafts over time and accumulated a lot of stuff for all of those different crafts,” Soloway said. “As I’ve gotten older … the more I find myself not being creative because I get hung up on the environmental issues of it.”

Soloway said that she was inspired to start The Makery from her job as the manager of Muscle Up Yarn in Shelburne, where customers would come in asking for places to distribute unused materials from late family members. Others would come in looking for more affordable crafting supplies.

After doing some research, Soloway was surprised to find that Burlington didn’t have a secondhand art store — and decided that she could change that.

“There was a point in my head I think where it went from, ‘I wish somebody else would do that,’ to, ‘What if somebody else does that before I do?’” Soloway said. 

The Makery also provides ways for longtime artisans and prospective artists alike to bond over low-pressure crafter gatherings. “It’s so hard as an adult to try something new and to feel like, “Is this worth it?’” Soloway said. That’s why her “Craft and Sip” nights were born, along with other workshops.

Looking forward, ReVT plans to host more community meetings to provide space for discussion and feedback. They’re also committed to increasing the prominence of events like repair cafes and the visibility of local handypersons through statewide directories.

“We want (ReVT) to be driven by the community,” Alexander said. “We don’t want to tell them, ‘This is what we’re going to show you.’ We want people in that reuse and repair community to come to us and say, ‘Hey, we’d like to learn about this.’”

ReVT’s listserv currently reaches about 150 people. Members have access to the program’s newsletter, which highlights reuse and repair businesses, recaps previous meetings and provides space for individuals to voice their thoughts. 

“I think more than anything, I’m just glad to be a part of the solution,” Soloway said.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described the role of the Addison County Solid Waste Management District.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Reduce, reuse, repair: A Vermont network works to cut down on waste while fostering community.