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

HYDE PARK — When New Zealand native Charlotte Brynn moved to Vermont in 1998, it didn’t take long for her to discover the natural waters of Vermont. 

Brynn grew up swimming in glacial lakes and the waters that surround the island country. Now she’s been the executive director of the Swimming Hole, a nonprofit community pool and fitness center in Stowe, since 2001. 

While she transitioned to her life in the United States, she began open water swimming in Vermont at the Green River Reservoir in Hyde Park. In 2006, Brynn entered a YMCA Burlington event to swim eight miles across Lake Champlain from Willsboro Point in New York to Burlington. 

She quickly fell in love with long-distance open water swimming and eventually set a goal to swim the English Channel, the part of the Atlantic Ocean that separates southern England and northern France. Brynn was able to do the 21-mile swim in 11 hours and 43 minutes. 

The 12-year journey to success would deepen Brynn’s relationship with the natural waters of the world and strengthen her passion for protecting the environment. For many open water swimmers like Brynn, concern for the environment plays a large role in their swimming careers. 

“As open water swimmers, we gain an appreciation for the environment,” said Paula Yankauskas, a resident of Hyde Park and another long-distance swimmer who uses Green River Reservoir for training. “Without it, we wouldn’t be able to do what we do.” 

Yankauskas has been swimming since she was 11 years old and swam for the University of Vermont. Eventually, she would train and successfully swim the English Channel, making her the oldest woman in the United States to do so in 2016. She and Brynn also both swam the Catalina Channel and around the island of Manhattan. 

“You start to want to care about [the natural waters] and do what you can to help keep things clean and available,” Yankauskas said. 

Brynn said that Green River Reservoir is well-maintained and protected from bad water quality and doesn’t appear to have runoff. Both Crystal Lake and Lake Willoughby, other natural waters in the Vermont and New Hampshire area, she said, are also pretty clear. “Lake Memphremagog saddens me because I’ve noticed a real decline,” Brynn said. 

Brynn has been swimming in Lake Memphremegog since 2009 and has seen a variety of manmade waste, bleaching and discoloration of rocks on the side, and occasionally white and foamy bubbles on the surface. In 2021, Canadian officials found traces of PFAS in the lake. 

Lake Memphremagog, which crosses over into the Canadian border, is 31 miles long. Three-quarters of it is in Vermont and it serves as a water source for 200,000 people. 

“I’m in there an hour to five to ten hours,” Brynn said. “There’s definitely a concern.” 

Brynn said she has her own test kit to test any of the waters she swims in after flooding or if there’s discoloration. 

She also said, despite its great swimming community and accessibility, Lake Champlain has work to do. She monitors swimming areas online to make sure they are safe from harmful recurring contaminants like cyanobacteria or phosphorus runoff. 

Another concern that Yankauskas raised is the recent increase in wildfire smoke in the state. When open water swimming in a group, she noted how one of their members, who has asthma, hadn’t been able to swim on days with bad air quality. In response, their practices have been moved indoors if the air quality index is high enough. 

But despite concern for water and air quality, as well as their health, both Brynn and Yankauskas keep on swimming. 

“The water really produces a giant hug and the ripples of it just wash away stuff,” Brynn said. “It’s very much like meditation or yoga where once you are one with the water and you’re swimming, those other stresses and worries, whether they’re relevant or not, they melt away.” 

Brynn said she felt her relationship with nature had changed during the process of training for the English Channel, especially with the Green River Reservoir. 

“I know every tree and rock along that shoreline,” Brynn said. “You have such an appreciation for the beauty.” 

Franny Cohen is a New Hampshire resident who spends time swimming in Vermont’s natural waters. She said she feels like part of the landscape when open water swimming.

“You’re aware of the loons and the ducks in New England,” said Cohen. She called her time swimming in the Boston Harbor euphoric. 

Yankauskas recalled swimming in the Catalina Channel at night and swimming through bioluminescent organisms in the water. “It’s like shooting diamonds and lightning off your fingertips,” she said. “It’s just really beautiful.” 

Brynn said sometimes when she’s swimming she can feel fish swim under her bodies’ shade, hiding from people who are fishing in the lakes. 

These swimmers’ passion and commitment for the open waters only empowers them to communicate, educate, and inspire others to think about how important good water quality is for the planet. 

Brynn called water the resource of the future. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Wild swimming helps Vermonters connect to nature .

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

When Robin Berger became a member of the Intervale Community Farm CSA in 1998, she said that toward the end of the summer pickups, in October, the farm would have a membership survey and invite members for hot cider.

But these days, Berger said, “It is no longer cold in October.” 

As global temperatures continue breaking records, farmers worldwide are seeing disruptions in their farming schedules, including shifting harvesting times and changing crop choices. 

CSAs, an agricultural business model which stands for community supported agriculture, is a program in which members sign up for weekly shares to get a promised set of produce for the year prior to harvesting season. This model provides farms with a secured revenue and an understanding on what they need to grow and what equipment to buy to make themselves profitable.  

While farms try to adjust their CSA formats by making them more flexible or diversifying their crops, they are also trying to keep membership afloat. Berger, along with many other longtime CSA members, has noticed climate disruptions, such as warmer weather and flooding creeping into their produce-filled lives. Members are having to adjust their expectations on what crops they’re receiving as well as alter their grocery store needs. While some choose to stick with it, others don’t put up with the insecurity. 

In 2023 and 2024, the Intervale Community Farm was hit by summer flooding that damaged and destroyed many farms and homes. While the land was able to recover, the farm still lost many of their regular products, including carrots, butternut squash and onions, Berger said.

“There are some things they just couldn’t plant again in time for them to get a harvest,” Berger said. She said she and other CSA members have talked about how they have to remember which produce they now have to get at the grocery store that they normally don’t. 

“I’m just out of practice, all my onions have come from the farm basically since they’ve had a CSA,” Berger said. 

She also saw how members used to get Brussels sprouts at the summer share, but are now only available for the winter share. Berger said this is because “it’s just not going to frost before the end of the summer share,” due to the warmer weather carrying into the fall. Regardless of changes in her produce lifestyle, Berger never considered ending her CSA membership. 

However, some CSA members might have felt differently when they saw changes in their subscription.

Andy Jones, the Intervale’s farm manager, said the team typically saw a 90% membership renewal rate from one year to the next, but after the floods, they saw it drop to 80–85%. This decrease was largely due to a proportion of newer members who didn’t have a CSA track record. 

Jones said this wasn’t a shock. He saw the same drop in members in 2011 and 2012 when Hurricane Irene hit. In the long run, the farm has a successful track record of consumer value and quality of produce, he said. 

“People that have been with us for many years can see that,” Jones said. “It’s harder to do that when you’re brand new.” 

The Farm Upstream, a certified organic farm in Jericho, is in its first season doing a CSA and trying to keep their model — which is based on the Intervale farm — as flexible as possible for members. This includes occasional choice in produce and adjusting pick-up times if needed. 

“We’re trying to create models that work for people’s lifestyles,” said Jake Kornfeld, one of the five owners of the farm. 

The team knows what to expect when it comes to preparing for floods and climate adaptation as all five of them have worked with CSAs in the past. One of the farm owners, Tucker Andrews, saw his previous farm get wiped out last summer by floods.

The farm’s land, which was meticulously chosen, steers clear of floodplains for the most part and has well-drained soil. The team also diversifies their crops and practices successive planting, the process of planting a crop on the same field that was just harvested, which allows for seasonal variability. 

“If some catastrophe happens, we can bounce back in a couple of weeks, and that should be okay,” Kornfeld said. 

The owners plan on hosting community events with their members, including farm tours and potlucks. “It’s just a way to make sure people feel like they’re a part of something that’s more than a transaction,” Kornfeld said. 

Jeanette Berry, another longtime member of the Intervale CSA, said even though there was crop loss on the farm, it never crossed her mind to quit the farm because of it. “The produce that we got (after the floods) was still overall cheaper than if we bought it at the store,” she said. 

Berry said some Intervale CSA members were offered a partial refund in response to the missing produce. But she didn’t even consider taking it. “It’s a minor contribution to the farm, to not ask for a refund on a few weeks of lost crops,” Berry said. 

The only drawback of the CSA that Berry could think of was that she had too many vegetables in her refrigerator. “We have so much choice in what we can pick up,” she said. 

That’s the goal for Ananda Gardens, a Vermont CSA based in Montpelier that focuses a lot of time and energy on making sure there are options for their members. The farm offers produce delivery and pickups for their CSA and has 60 to 80 different varieties of crops. 

“That’s one of the benefits of having a very diversified CSA,” said Melisa Oliva, one of the owners of the farm, “You don’t have all your eggs in one basket.” 

The farm was minimally impacted by the 2023 flooding when they lost a greenhouse of tomatoes. Oliva said that the potatoes that they get from a partnership with another farm seemed limited at the time of the flooding. 

“It’s on the back burner all the time,” Oliva said  about extreme weather events in the state. “When are we going to be impacted? What is going to happen?” 

Although they haven’t dealt with a lot of rainfall this year, the farm has made adjustments due to summer heat waves, she said. The team placed a cover mesh in their greenhouses because the crops can burn from the heat. They’ve also had to shift their farmwork earlier. “By 3 p.m., it’s just too warm,” Oliva said. 

But this internal preparation doesn’t stop or limit her team. “We’re committing to planting those tomatoes, and we are committed together to strengthen the fabric of the local economy,” Oliva said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: As Vermont CSAs adapt to the climate crisis, members notice the changes .

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.

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

BURLINGTON — While sitting on the hills of Shelburne Farms, a sustainable education farm near Burlington, Kelly Knudsen was given an invitation. She, along with the group she sat near, were asked what movement they could see. At first, Knudsen, confused by the question, didn’t see anything.

Then, she focused. She saw the soft swaying of singular branches, the slight shift in fine blades of grass, the unexpected appearance of a bird, and clouds, making their slow expedition towards her. 

That newfound attention is what forest bathing is all about, according to Knudsen. The process of slowing down, a process that Knudsen began even before she received a diagnosis of non-cancerous meningioma in December. 

Forest bathing, based off the Japanese practice “Shinrin-yoku,” emphasizes intentionally surrounding oneself in nature and staying focused on the present. It can take many forms such as meditating, walking, or group discussions. As forest bathing gains popularity in Vermont and New York, some have begun pursuing the therapeutic act as part of their healing journey through complex medical conditions. 

Stacey LaFave, an oncology social worker, hit her wall with healthcare and became a certified forest bathing guide through the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy Guides and Programs in 2022. 

LaFave now runs an eight-month forest bathing support group for cancer patients out of the initial treatment phase — the first line of treatment to control the cancer — through the CVPH Fitzpatrick Cancer Center, a hospital in Plattsburgh, New York that’s part of the University of Vermont Health Network. 

Between early April and November, her patients can attend bi-weekly, closed sessions in the woods of New York’s Point Au Roche State Park. She guided her first group last year and took on a second group in the spring. 

“The goal is to just walk and really notice, to get them out of their heads and into their bodies,” LaFave said. 

LaFave’s group members span a variety of ages and stages in cancers and treatments. The younger members are in their 40s and the oldest are in their 80s, LaFave said. One of her patients had been diagnosed with a second cancer during the sessions. LaFave said that being surrounded by a world of support helped her deal with the diagnosis. 

“I think she was at peace with it,” LaFave said. 

But typically, she said, cancer doesn’t take center stage. 

“We don’t talk about cancer that much,” LaFave said. “Maybe cancer was the one thing everybody had in common, but often people talked just about anything.” 

Through support groups like LaFave’s people around the world are implementing the practice into their healthcare decisions as researchers have found that medical patients who spend more time in greenspaces can see their health improve.

“People that engaged with this greenspace, they had more beneficial health outcomes,” said Dr. Jean Bikomeye, a researcher at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee who published a 2022 review showing that in five cancer-related studies, cancer patients who spent more time gardening, forest bathing, and just more time outside overall had improved health effects.  

“We saw improvement in strength and weight loss,” Bikomeye said. His team also saw an improvement in biological markers such as inflammation and an overall quality of life, according to the study. 

Knudsen, who participated in forest bathing sessions long before her diagnosis, saw the effects on her everyday life. 

“In today’s society it’s so hard for many of us to slow down and be present in the moment,” she said. But when you do that, she added, “You develop more of a gratitude for the natural world.”

Knudsen is an outdoor educator at Shelburne farms. She works with kids at the farm by getting them outside and fostering a relationship with the natural world. One activity she does with them is called “Fist Full of Sounds” where she gets the kids to stop, close their eyes, and shout out all the sounds they hear. 

“When kids are coming to the farm, a lot of the time they really just need to play and explore and be curious in the natural world,” she said. “To me, forest bathing is a way that as adults we’re going out and just playing in the forest and being curious about what’s around us.” 

Knudsen’s forest bathing sessions are also held at the farms and have always been led by Duncan Murdoch who has been a certified Nature Forest Therapy Guide since 2015. He guides primarily group walks with a variety of people. This includes those being affected by cancer. 

Around the same time Knudsen received her diagnosis, she learned from another session member that they had been diagnosed with cancer. The two of them have stayed connected beyond the forest bathing group ever since. 

“For three hours, you’re with people who get it,” Murdoch said. “That feels really healing.” 

Much like other guides, Murdoch uses all five senses as a means of focusing on the present. Smell, touch, sound, and sight come easy, but to experience taste, both he and LaFave make a tea at the end of their sessions, either out of plants or mushrooms. 

Six months after LaFave finished her 2024 session, she sent out a follow up survey to her patients who reflected on their experience and how it’s changed their lives.

“I got in touch with nature, made great friendships with others, and it gave me a large amount of personal growth,” said one anonymous patient. 

Another said that after the treatment their house was now full of houseplants. “I met other people who have taught me a lot about surviving positively after cancer,” another anonymous patient said. 

These are reflections from what LaFave tries to teach in every session, she said:  “The forest is the therapist, we’re just the guide.”  

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermonters turn to forests for therapy.

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

Imagine a commute without the worry of traffic jams, potholes or detours, a path to town that’s nearby, maintained and linked to routes just like it all over the state. 

That’s the Cross Vermont Trail Association’s vision — to create a web of trails for bikers and walkers to have easy access and safe travels between north-central Vermont towns. 

“The goal of the work we do is to have trails that connect, that go where people want to go,” Executive Director Greg Western said, explaining how the organization joins existing trails with connector paths like jigsaw pieces.

Groups like Cross Vermont are increasingly tailoring their work to people outside the usual biking and hiking crowd who want an alternative to roadways: commuters.

“Our whole mission is trails that go somewhere,” Western said. “The whole point is that you could use it to commute.” 

One example: The group built a bridge over the Winooski River, which Western said “gets you a couple miles off of Route 2.” Since 2019, there have been at least 18 crashes involving pedestrians or cyclists on Route 2 in Chittenden County, according to the state Agency of Transportation’s crash database.

“It’s just a way to cut off miles of crappy highway with shoulders and people speeding,” Western said. “People use bits and pieces of it.” 

Cindi Wight, who directs Burlington’s parks and recreation department, uses the city’s bike path to commute to work. 

“It’s just a nice way to start your day when you have this green corridor that you’re biking through,” she said. 

During the winter time, her department plows the western side of the Greenway Path, allowing people to ski on the east side and walk, run or bike on the other. 

“People who are commuting can use the path, but people who want to ski can use the snow,” she said, adding later, “A nice way to extend the biking season is to add winter biking.” 

She encouraged people to try it. 

Local Motion, a statewide advocacy group for bikers and walkers based in Burlington, each month hosts “EZ Breezy Rides,” outings meant to teach people routes around the city, especially first-time bike commuters. 

“If you just know where you’re going, have a plan and action before you head out the door. It feels a lot more comfortable,” said Val Cyr, a communications specialist at Local Motion. The organization’s office sits on the Burlington Bike Path, which many people from its team use to commute. 

Burlington Wildways is an organization that connects natural areas and paths around Vermont’s largest city. It provides education programs for those interested in managing, advocating for and teaching people about natural and wild spaces. 

Alongside that, the group maintains a 5.6 miles of linked trails that run from Salmon Hole Park to the Ethan Allen Homestead, both natural and paved. 

Patrick Dunseith, a member of Wildways and a regular bike commuter, is also a land manager at the Intervale. One of the trails at the property is a 2-mile puzzle piece in both the Wildways and Cross Vermont networks. 

Dunseith hopes to see more lighting on paths as it gets darker earlier, as well as see people keeping the trails cleaner. 

“With natural trails or social trails, they’re spaces that we can just look at like, ‘This is somebody’s responsibility.’ Or we can look at it as, ‘This is a collective resource, and I’m part of this place too as a user. It’s my responsibility as well,’” he said. 

Retirees Gail and David O’Brien, two East Hardwick residents in their 70s,  are frequent travellers on their local section of the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail — a 93-mile path from St. Johnsbury to Swanton. 

Biking for about 3 ½ miles on the trail, the couple can get to Hardwick to go grocery shopping, attend town meetings and volunteer at the Hardwick Food Pantry, where they ride to and from every Monday. 

“We try to err on the side of using our bikes as much as we can,” David said. “It’s just knowledge because it’s a beautiful section of the trail.” 

This year, the couple became rail trail ambassadors — volunteers who act as “a presence on the trail when people are stopped and look like they’re lost or confused,” Gail said. 

They also report fallen trees and other problems on the trail and remind people to leave no trace. 

“We know so many people in the Hardwick area that weren’t biking that bought bikes and started biking because of the rail trail,” Gail said. 

David shares the same sentiment: “The more that people decide that they can get here to there on a bicycle or walking, rather than the convenience of the car, is going to be obviously good for the environment and good for their health.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Dread your commute? These folks suggest trying a trail instead. .

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

Theresa Armata remembers the scene atop Putney Mountain the first time she came to join her local hawk-watching crew in 2010.  

“There were these people sitting in chairs staring at the sky,” she said, reflecting on their welcoming presence. “And so on my next day off, I came again, and again, and again.” 

She’s been an official counter for the Putney Mountain Hawkwatch ever since, one of several making sure the tallies of raptor sightings are accurate. Their work, the group says, shows 2024 has been a banner year.

The group, which heads out from late August to mid-November, reported a total of 19,428 raptors — about 16,200 counts being broad-winged hawks, a common North American species. In a typical year volunteers would see about 7,000 total raptors. 

This was the group’s “best year ever,” said John Anderson, a volunteer since 1996.

Every day members of the group sit on its namesake summit and count the many species that fly by the peak. At the end of each day they report their numbers, which are recorded on hawkcount.org, a database used by the Hawk Migration Association of North America. 

What accounted for the jump in sightings this year?

“It’s a weather thing,” Anderson said. “It’s just the big weather patterns we don’t quite fully understand. Little variations can make a huge difference.”

When broad-winged hawks migrate, they tend to gather in thermals — bubbles of warm, rising air that help carry them on their flight. The birds look for other hawks to know where a thermal might be — a lot of them is a good sign, causing a mass of birds to gravitate. 

Anderson said the Putney Mountain group once saw some 800 broad-wings in what likely was a thermal. “At a distance they look like swarms of gnats,” he said. “The sky is full of specks.” 

The volunteers use a variety of binoculars and spotting scopes, the same methods they’ve been using since the group formed in 1974. The group had right around 40 volunteers this year, Anderson said, ranging from people who had two visits or fewer to those who came out most days of the week. 

“You can find a million interested people, but it takes a lot of patience and a lot of time commitment,” he said. 

Candace Hess has had a lifelong love for birdwatching and joined the Hawkwatch in 2013. 

“It’s just really rewarding to see so many birds and to see what happens in the different years that have high numbers and the comparisons,” she said. 

Hess is interested not only in what is happening on the Putney summit but  also in the bigger picture of the birds — their overall health, how the populations are fluctuating and the conversations happening about their overall decline. 

“What happened to us this season just falls in that whole mix for me,” she said. 

She listed 2017, 2018 and 2021 as other outstanding years, but no other year has matched the prevailing number of 2024. 

Armata said that “we never really know” when it comes to the why factor. She said the weather systems she saw at the beginning of the season looked promising. 

“I kind of had a feeling that we might have a pretty good year,” she said, when she saw a big pressure system start to settle repeatedly with no northwest winds. “But (I) never expected what actually happened in September with our broad-wing hawk count.” 

Along with Hess and Anderson, Armata is one of the few group members who is an official counter, the people who make the entries into the database and make the final decisions when there’s a dispute over numbers or species identification. 

Armata lives in Bennington and drives an hour and a half to the summit on the days she counts from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and even beyond. “It’s just an awesome sight of nature,” she said, “especially in September to see the huge mass of birds just coming over you.” 

Soon, Armata will be awarded the Community Scientist Lifetime Achievement Award from the Vermont Center for Ecostudies for her work as a volunteer. 

“You meet so many interesting people,” Armata said. “It’s a wonderful way to spend the day.” 

When Kent McFarland, co-founder of the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, wants to get a more complete sense of how the hawks are faring, he turns to the North American Breeding Bird Survey, a long-term monitoring database that tracks North America bird populations during June. The database provides numbers the Hawkwatch doesn’t get during its off-season. 

The overall trends of the database suggest that broad-wing hawks are increasing in the region, McFarland said. The data also shows an increased sightings of other species such as the black vulture and turkey vultures. 

“Clearly the reason they had a record count was that wild broad-winged count right there,” McFarland said. “I think this starts to tell the story a little bit.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Putney Mountain Hawkwatch reports ‘best year ever’ for sightings.

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

Shawn Good has been working to restore muskellunge fish since 2010, when Vermont began stocking them in the Missisquoi Bay and River. But he’s had the idea to bring the species — a once-widespread relative of the pike that can grow to 5 feet long — back to prominence in Lake Champlain for close to 20 years. 

Following a reduction in their range to just the Missisquoi River over the 20th century, the muskellunge were seemingly wiped out after an untreated waste spill from a mill in 1979. 

Now, after years of releasing fish into the lake, Good and other fisheries biologists have just finished capturing and radio-tagging six adult muskies, as they’re known, to watch their spawning behavior and learn more about how successful the fish have been in reproducing naturally. 

“This project is all about bringing them back,” said Good, the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife scientist leading the program. 

Since 2010, the department has stocked over 66,000 muskies. A portion of them recaptured at age 1 or older are tagged with a microchip that biologists can scan to identify a specific fish. Those tags have allowed Good’s team to monitor muskie growth and survival.

The team finished the final radio tagging only a few weeks ago and is now waiting until the spring for the muskie spawning season to start. Team members tag the fish early to let the muskies have time to recover and get used to their tags, which are inserted into their abdominal cavity. The radio tags last up to six years and allow state workers to find and keep track of where the muskies spawn and lay eggs, Good said. 

On the final day of tagging in late October, the scientists were on the Missisquoi River using a slim metal antenna to detect and track the sixth fish in the water. 

“We’re just trying to see if the fish are generally in the area right now,” Good said.

The scientists use a metal pole-like tool to send an electrical current into the water and stun the fish so that they can bring them aboard.

“When it comes time to actually start detecting it and their locations for actually spawning and laying their eggs, we’re gonna want to be a lot more specific,” he said. 

Each device costs $220, and Good said the team could only fund six for the project so far. But the hope is that those six fish will eventually lead Good and his team to larger populations they can monitor. 

When the scientists survey the muskies, they’re looking for how much the fish have grown in length and weight. By using the implanted tags, they can track a fish down and scan it to look at its past numbers. Then scientists can compare those records to the fish’s current length and weight.

“It tells us how much it’s growing in how much time and it gives us good information on how healthy the fish is in terms like is it growing slow, is it growing fast,” Good said. 

The team does the same with other fish species, including northern pike, salmon, trout and sturgeon — just some of the many fish that can be found in the Missisquoi. 

“With this (electrofishing) boat, we get to see all the fish that a lot of people don’t get to see,” said Dan DeLucia, a seasonal fisheries technician working with Good and his team. “When you start seeing them, it’s great.” 

The surveys will allow Good and his team to make a decision on whether they want to stop stocking hatchery fish in the river altogether, he said. 

Dave Gibson, a fisheries scientist who has been with Fish and Wildlife for 33 years, said that throughout the process and during his years working, he’s enjoyed seeing how much has changed and how much has improved. 

“We’re helping maintain and sustain a population,” he said.

DeLucia said much of the same. “It’s crazy how many we’ve caught this year,” he said. “They’re supposed to be all spread out, so it kind of gives you the assumption that this is a spawning area, that they’re all congregating.” 

The goal of the project, Good said, is to restore the muskellunge to a self-sustaining population that naturally reproduces. 

“This is a restoration project. We’re trying to restore these fish species to Vermont,” Good said. “It’s a career of work you’re seeing.” 

At the heart of it all, DeLucia said, “We’re just trying to get people to care about them like we care about them.”  

Correction: The six muskies in question were being radio-tagged for the first time, not re-tagged, and only fish age 1 or older are fitted with transponders. Fish and Wildlife is only tagging and tracking mature muskies. The chemical spill that seemingly eliminated the remaining original muskie population occurred in 1979.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Radio tags let scientists monitor muskies in the Missisquoi.

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

Vermont scientists aren’t sure what could happen in the future as far as flooding goes, but as colder temperatures arrive, they’re continuing to monitor water quality in Lake Champlain and research ways to protect it in anticipation for winter and summer floods like those of the past two years. 

Matthew Vaughan, chief scientist at the Lake Champlain Basin Program, said it’s a long-term picture. 

Vaughan is in the process of finalizing the organization’s assessment of the 2024 flooding, which he said should be available around December. 

Overall, the July 2024 flooding was more destructive downstream while the December 2023 flooding resulted in higher flow because it involved snow and rain, Vaughan said. 

“Typically what we see is our highest flows are usually in the springtime because of snowmelt, but what we’re seeing because of climate change is a decrease in our springtime flows and an increase in wintertime flows as more precipitation falling is rain rather than snow,” he said. 

“We’re seeing an actual detectable shift in our hydrology,” he said, “how rain is falling, precipitation is falling and how our rivers are flowing.” 

But Vaughan noted that every year is different and that it’s always best to be prepared for both an extreme or a typical year. 

Vaughan said that 2021 and 2022 were dry years with few big storms, and the nutrient loading into Lake Champlain those years was relatively low compared to others. 

When lakes and rivers are overloaded with nutrients or sediments during heavy water events, they become more susceptible to blue-green algae blooms and other issues.

Vaughan advises preparing as early as possible. “The flooding certainly has been a wake-up call for all of our communities, and it’s certainly good to look at your own vulnerability in terms of flooding — what you can do to prepare in terms of preparing your household or property,” he said. 

On his end, Vaughan and his colleagues are continuing research and projects to help build resilience. They’re putting funding aside to collect water quality samples during, before and after flooding. “So we can say with more certainty what is and is not in the water in terms of contaminants and in the area we’re concerned about,” he said. 

The program also has studies underway to determine how much floodplain restoration may be necessary to connect or restore river systems to a more natural state, a way to mitigate the havoc of flooding. 

Rebecca Diehl is taking part in that research. In addition to collaborating with the Lake Champlain Basin Program, she is a research faculty member at the University of Vermont and looks to understand the processes that support properly functioning floodplains.

“We think about the capacity for the natural features of our landscape: pieces next to the rivers that support flood resilience, improve water quality and provide habitat,” she said. 

Healthy floodplains can slow down floodwaters as they move through a watershed as well as capture and extract sediment and phosphorus that has been traveling downstream. 

The research focuses on what the outcome could look like if those features are restored or conserved. The researchers are trying to quantify, measure, document and map floodplains to support better management of those systems. 

“We’ve got a lot more sediment moving through our river systems during these extreme events and it’s significant,” said Diehl. “Phosphorus is the largest concern, but it is that piece of the puzzle that needs to be more specifically accounted for.” 

In her research, Diehl compared a hypothetical small but yearly flood event to the extreme weather events seen in the last two years. The latter, she found, can put down six to seven times more sediment and phosphorus than more commonly occurring floods. “There’s questions of what that balance is, if floodplains can keep pace, (and) can they help put a dent in those elevated loads,” Diehl said.

She is now working with 20 floodplain sites and continues to monitor the spots she’s been looking at since 2019. 

“We will get data on any flood that continues to occur in Vermont,” she said. “The idea is that we are seeing a shift towards more frequent major events.” 

Diehl and fellow researchers are “just trying to understand what all those little drops, what all those floodplains throughout the basin — how they all add up to contribute to that load.” 

Peter Isles is the project leader for the long-term lake and cyanobacteria monitoring program within the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources. The program covers 15 sites on the lake and 21 rivers, all monitored regularly, and people involved have been looking for ways to increase Vermont’s resilience to floods in the long term. 

“If we get these big pulses of nutrients building up in lake sediments. that is probably going to increase nutrients over a multiple years to decades timescale,” Isles said. 

He said, “It’s going to put a finger on the scale and make it harder to bring down nutrient concentrations in the lake over time.” 

Things that reduce erosion during normal storm events, such as planting cover crops, also tend to reduce erosion during major storm events, even if they fail in some spots, he said. “It’s hard to anticipate and take preventative actions because you never know exactly where it could occur and how extreme interventions would have to be to prevent those extreme impacts.” 

With future storms, Isles’ team wants to be better about getting data out, taking photos and talking to the public via the press or otherwise. They are incorporating more satellite data into monitoring so they can immediately see when and where lakes are turbid following major weather events, he said. The project is working with the Lake Champlain Basin Program to install better sensors around the watershed and the lake to capture higher-quality images and readings in real time. 

“I think increasing the use of high frequency sensors is something I’d like to see,” Isles said, along with increasing satellite data. “I think we are in conversation about other types of monitoring that would be particularly useful in the aftermath of these events.” 

Throughout all of his work, Isles stays optimistic. “I would like to avoid the feeling that we’re all staring disaster in the face,” he said. 

“It’s just something we need to be concerned about as these things become more common in the future,” he said later.

Read the story on VTDigger here: How Lake Champlain scientists are prepping for future floods.

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

From August to November the members of Putney Mountain Hawkwatch stand on the summit of their namesake spotting and surveying migrating raptors. But that’s not their only job. As they count hawks, they also count migrating monarch butterflies. 

The Hawkwatch is one of the many groups in Vermont and the U.S. that have been keeping record of migrating monarch numbers. In the wake of changing climates, butterfly lovers have been concerned for their black-and-orange friends in the sky. 

“The butterfly itself isn’t in danger of going extinct — it’s this great migration which we’re in danger of losing,” said Kent McFarland of the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, a nonprofit that promotes the conservation of wildlife. 

To help the species’ hurting population, conservation experts in the Northeast urge people to record their observations through sites like eButterfly, iNaturalist, Mission Monarch or Journey North. People can also learn how to plant butterfly-friendly plants to help the critters on their yearly journeys. 

With the help of community science platforms like those, the Center for Ecostudies is working on its second Vermont Butterfly Atlas, a five-year survey done every 20 years to document butterfly abundance statewide.

“It was not a good year for monarchs (in Vermont),” McFarland said. “Monarch productivity was terrible.” He believes the bad heat waves and heavy rain the state faced in July put a strain on the population migrating north. 

Vermonters seem up to the task.

“I do see more Vermonters interested in conserving pollinators, including monarchs, and a growing awareness of the ability for communities and individuals to be contributing,” said Emily May, a pollinator conservation biologist who lives in Middlebury and works for the Xerces Society, an Oregon nonprofit focused on the conservation of insects and other invertebrates.

“Eastern monarchs are definitely in decline,” May said. “We may not see it as individuals because population fluctuates.” According to her organization, western monarchs have declined by more than 95% since the 1980s, and their eastern counterparts have declined by over 70% since the 1990s.

Weather and climate change have played a part in the decline, but May said people can help out on a small scale by using fewer pesticides and planting pollinator-friendly plants like milkweed and goldenrod. 

She also referenced national funds to put monarch-friendly habitats on working lands like farms.

When they arrive in Vermont, monarchs expect fresh milkweed to eat and lay their eggs on, but between delayed travel and a decline in milkweed, they have nowhere to go — and numbers for the next generation of monarchs will be a lot lower. 

“Being able to nectar the whole way on their migration to Mexico is super important,” said McFarland. In the U.S. there’s been a significant decline in monarchs seen during this time, he said. 

“The only way we know a lot of this stuff is because thousands of people have helped us collect data across the landscape,” he said. This includes groups like the Putney Mountain Hawkwatch. 

John Anderson from the Hawkwatch calls 2024 a “bust” year for monarchs. “What we’ve observed is that there is a boom and bust cycle.” Last year they counted 318 monarchs, he said, and projections for this year’s numbers are looking similar. 

“All of these little things that are chipping away at the population — the insect predators, spraying the cornfields in the Midwest, the droughts down in Texas — all these things are probably a factor. But I think the overall problem is probably the weather,” Anderson said. 

The Pollinator Pathway, a volunteer organization spanning 18 states, plants pollinator-friendly gardens across the U.S. Julie Parker-Dickerson is a part of the Charlotte effort, one of several in Vermont. “The idea is that we would connect all of these gardens so that every butterfly would have a waystation,” she said. 

She recommends leaving leaves and gardens up in the fall. “The more we leave up our gardens in the fall, the better habitat we’re creating for the spring,” she said. “You’re also helping the environment and keeping insect populations in locations they’re familiar with.” 

The Center for Ecostudies also works with Mission Monarch, a community science platform that allows anyone to document monarch breeding. The platform was created by Maxim Larrivée, director of the Montreal Insectarium, one of the largest insect museums in the world. 

“We can get fooled sometimes by a lot of the abundance locally where we live,” said Larrivée. “Having this capacity really allows us to put in perspective how monarch breeding and migration is happening.” 

Larrivée said migration came very late in Canada this year. The country saw a similar size in population to last year, he said. But in the U.S., platforms recorded that this year the population was half the size of last year’s.

“It really underscores the fact that this year might not be a year that we can feel good about,” Larrivée said, “in terms of what the size of the overwintering population will be next winter.” 

While the numbers in Canada were similar to last year, it doesn’t mean the numbers weren’t good, he said.  

“We have control over making efficient efforts to restore monarch breeding ground and identifying the migratory record,” Larrivée said. “We can ensure when those monarchs are initiating their migration from the breeding ground in the north, they have access to all the nectar necessary to fuel up before they migrate.” 

The data that Mission Monarch gains is used to identify where the higher densities of the species are, especially prime breeding areas, so that people can restore their habitats. Sightings from cities, Larrivée said, might not paint the whole picture.

“When you consider the effort in documenting them in natural habitats, you realize that their density is much worse,” he said. 

“What we can do is encourage people to create more breeding habitat,” he said. Without a proper breeding habitat, monarchs will lay more eggs than natural, hurting their reproductive capacity and food source and causing most of the caterpillars to starve, Larrivée said. 

“Monarchs have a high capacity to reproduce, but they need a break,” he said. “They need to be able to bounce back.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Citizen science key to preserving monarch butterflies’ grand migration, experts say.

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

Sam Swanson understands people can feel hopeless in preventing climate change. “You can feel the despair,” he said. “No one needs to be doing the things that need to be done.” 

As a member of Vermont Interfaith Power and Light, he and colleagues are taking an approach to environmental advocacy they hope can provide a bit more hope — by looking at climate solutions through a religious and spiritual lens.

The group is a faith-based organization group that educates religious communities on the environmental movement. It provides spiritual comfort and material, like when members held an event last fall at Burlington’s Rock Point where they reflected on the recent floods through workshops and meditations for spiritual guidance. There, organization board president Ron McGarvey said, people could share in their pain — and their hope. 

Faith leaders see that sense of resolve as another way to rally people to action.

“What drew me to this job is that climate change as an individual can feel overwhelming and abstract,” said Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder, the organization’s coordinator. “This group is well equipped to look at climate change as a community.” 

“Faith communities have a real power,” she said. “The climate crisis is a spiritual crisis.” 

The group works with close to 90 congregations and religious organizations in Vermont and funds climate change protection and education for many of them. It can help churches pay for weatherization, heat pumps and other equipment, and in 2023 the organization gave more than 200 free energy assessments statewide. 

“Faith communities in Vermont are respected voices,” McGarvey said. “They do their best to enact moral responsibility.” 

In 2018, the group supported the Rev. Nancy Wright, former pastor at Ascension Lutheran Church in South Burlington, and Richard Butz, a congregant there, to co-author a pair of watershed care manuals with a religious and spiritual lens. 

A grant from the New England Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church allowed the Care for Creation Committee of the church to roll out environmental education programs, like sending children in the Sunday school to the ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain or working with the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum to take boat trips. 

Butz found test tubes to give to families in the church and showed them how to test water near their homes. He would then look at the water and share his findings. 

“All of us working with the environmental crisis are trying to phrase it as a moral and a spiritual issue,” Wright said. “We say we’re being refreshed all the time and renewed by nature and by deep spiritual practices.” 

Why does Wright emphasize watershed education? “You can really see the influences of pollution, you can really talk about justice and it’s clear to people — it’s clearer than climate change,” she said.

Randy Kritkausky is the president of Ecologia, an international nonprofit based in Middlebury that provides environmental education, spaces for discussion and initiatives for businesses, organizations and grassroot groups. He is also a member of the Potawatomi tribe. One of his biggest focuses is using Indigenous spiritual teachings to change people’s mindsets about environmentalism. 

“How many times does Mother Earth need to send us a message of, ‘You can’t build right next to the creek or river and not expect Mother Nature to do what Mother Nature does,’ which is, assert her right to flow freely,” said Kritkausky. 

“It has driven home the message of Indigenous people that we need to look at Mother Nature as our coequal and not some thing that we can dominate,” he said. “It just doesn’t work.” 

Kritkausky said he often holds a lecture called “After the Floods,” which looks at the Potawatomi creation story to inspire people to be more reciprocal with nature. In the story, which takes place after the Earth has been flooded, a muskrat sacrifices himself to bring a clump of dirt back to the surface for his compatriots to rebuild the planet.  

“Those who’ve come before us, other than human kin, have prepared a path, and the way we can respectfully engage is with reciprocity,” Kritkausky said, explaining that people need to act selflessly to let those other species thrive. 

“We all need to listen more intimately with what the natural world is telling us about how it works, not imposing our own constructs and our own assumptions,” he said. “It’s about listening, it’s about being respectful and about being humble before nature, which is our co-equal.” 

Kritkausky points to urban wilderness interfaces, a term used by the government and scientists to describe where land populated by humans and unoccupied wilderness meet. People in those zones tend to see wildfire burnings or crossovers from bears into their backyard. Kritkausky said that as humans are negotiating with the natural world, the natural world is reoccupying it back.

“They were here before we are, and they finally figured out how to cohabit that space,” he said. “We have not, as humans, and that is what Indigenous people have learned and lived with for millennia.” 

“We have just for so long felt that we dominate everything that when we’re reminded that we don’t, it’s a shock,” he said. 

Some Vermonters may want to get politically active or go to lectures to engage with the environment, but others might just want to go outside. Spirit in Nature, an interfaith sanctuary in Ripton, offers an array of paths to do just that by connecting nature with religion. 

President Rob Slabaugh said Spirit in Nature looks at Christian, Quaker, Jewish, Indigenous and other spiritual beliefs and asks what they say about nature. 

The group of volunteers takes quotes from religious texts, prints them on plywood boards and mounts those onto trees scattered across the paths. But the signs merely serve to guide, Slabaugh said, because it’s nature that does the teaching. 

“Humans are a part of nature. We need to start acting like that,” Slabaugh said. “(The path) touches people, reminds people that we are a part of nature. We feel that by touching people like that, we’re motivating in a way that people will be more tuned in to what we need to do as humans.” 

He’s felt that since the pandemic, more people have used the paths. They come out for events in the forested area, too, such as forest bathing — a type of therapy or meditation — yoga and poetry walks. 

“It’s clear that public awareness has increased over time,” Slabaugh said of climate change and the movement to combat it. “I think Spirit in Nature has helped with being a supportive connection.” 

Read the story on VTDigger here: To Vermont faith groups, ‘climate crisis is a spiritual crisis’.

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

Julie Parker-Dickinson, a master gardener and a second-grade teacher, was encouraging kids about their futures back in 2017 when she realized something: She didn’t feel she was doing anything to ensure a bright future would still be there for them.

She decided to plant a garden at Quinlan’s Covered Bridge in Charlotte, where she lives, the first of many around town that she would fill with native species. The idea was to build a better food source for local pollinators, who play a vital role in helping plants reproduce. One day, she heard from Bethany Barry, who wanted to help pollinators in Addison County. She thought Parker-Dickinson could be a good partner.

Now both Parker-Dickinson and Barry are part of Pollinator Pathway, a network of volunteers across 18 states who plant, track and locate gardens of native, non-invasive plants and flowers. Their mission is to reduce the distance many pollinators like bees and butterflies need to go to get nectar and pollen. The gardens, in effect, form a highway for them. Parker-Dickinson runs the Charlotte effort, Barry the one in Addison County — two of six in Vermont.

The four principles of the pathways, said Barry, are to remove invasives, plant natives, abstain from pesticides and rethink your lawn. 

More extreme heat caused by increasing climate change makes it more tiring for pollinators to travel around. At the same time, they must travel longer distances than they’re used to because of how many lawns and homes have replaced natural landscapes. 

Monarch butterflies might be able to fly 2,500 miles when migrating, but Parker-Dickinson said the average butterfly is probably going no more than a mile to find food. 

“The pathway is meant to be a connector,” she said, comparing it to a grocery store where there would normally be a food desert. 

Parker-Dickinson has planted gardens by Monkton Central School, on a corner on the way into Charlotte from the south and at the Charlotte Library. One project she’s currently working on is at the school, where she teaches and is maintaining a strip filled with native plants, sunflowers and zinnias in the parking lot. 

Some plants she uses include Culver’s root, butterfly weed, mountain mint and bee balm — all native to Vermont. 

Parker-Dickinson said there are 45 million acres of lawn in the U.S. “If a portion was committed to pollinators, we could really do something about the climate crisis,” she said. 

“Nobody gets paid for this. It’s just something we can do to help,” she said. “It’s been really rewarding in terms of the whole community to take pride in.” 

Barry said bringing people in her community together has been an important part of the project. “It’s all about educating ourselves and others,” she said. She works with nine towns in Addison County.

Barry has given presentations and webinars across the state about pollinators and native plants. That’s on top of working on a pollinator garden next to Porter Medical Center in Middlebury and a garden in Weybridge near the Pulp Mill Covered Bridge. 

“If I was inside … I would be missing out on what’s happening with nature,” Barry said.

One thing she’s noticed in the wider world through getting out in the garden is a decline in monarch butterflies, something Parker-Dickinson and other Pathway members also described. 

“I’ve heard a lot of despair about our planet, about what’s happening, but then I bring it back to what can I do right here, right now, and this is making a difference,” she said. “It may not show to anyone else, but I know that I’m creating a resting place and food and habitat and adding to the biodiversity.” 

Debra Sprague, who helps maintain the Monkton Pathway, believes there are aesthetic benefits to growing native and wildflower-filled gardens instead of curating lawns or sewing gardens with invasive species. 

“The thing with native plants is, you have to pay attention to what’s good for the pollinators, and that means not pulling everything out in the fall and making it really neat and tidy,” she said. “It should be messy, and some people don’t like messy.” 

Similar to Barry, she has found that paying closer attention to pollinators has strengthened her success in the garden. 

“The wildflowers in May, looking for those, watching for insects, the different butterflies and bees and all the different creatures out there,” she said, “really just being outside in the garden makes you see more of those things and appreciate them.” 

Denise Greene and Melissa Jordan of the Lamoille County Pollinator Pathway are approaching their second growing season. Greene is based in Hyde Park, Jordan in Morrisville, and both have backgrounds in gardening, maintaining land and even worm farming. 

“As we continue along, PPLC will continue to grow and have opportunities to transform public spaces as well as private spaces,” Jordan said. “There’s a new wave happening, a new wave of thinking.” 

The Lamoille pathway has provided garden tours, advice on starting gardens and recommendations for plant and soil care. Greene said she’s even shown people how to solarize weeds — putting plastic over a garden bed, field or lawn and leaving it for the summer, effectively cooking the weed seeds and providing a clean slate in the fall. 

“We’re really available for any businesses or property owners or municipal properties to help work, to give volunteers or to give technical advice,” she said. 

Their group works with Peter Danforth, director of the Lamoille County Conservation District, on environmental advocacy.

They’ve done lots of planting around Oxbow Park in Morrisville and have converted Elsa French Park in Hyde Park from mostly lawn to freely growing wild species. Greene said with native meadows in place, prairie grasses that have robust root systems can better absorb rain water. 

Greene and Jordan emphasize that anyone can do it — even people who live in apartments without their own green spaces. That’s the reason why their group lets apartment residents register potted plants as part of the local pathway. 

“We live in such a beautiful and diverse planet, and we just want to do everything we can to keep it that way and not just disappear. And that means holding people accountable,” said Greene. 

She added: “Some people like politics, and some people like just to plant flowers.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermonters planting native gardens to help pollinators prosper.

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

When Peter Stickney walks along his cow paddocks in the morning, he notes the scattered patches of greener grass across the pasture. He knows what this means: It’s where his cows have peed. 

So when the Rich Earth Institute, a Brattleboro organization focused on turning human urine into fertilizer, approached him to be a farm partner, Stickney said it was a no-brainer. 

Stickney manages the Elm Lea Farm at The Putney School, a boarding high school in the Windham County town of the same name. For the past few years, alongside six other farms in Vermont and the Northeast, Stickney has been receiving treated urine from Rich Earth Institute to spray across the farmland at Elm Lea.

The institute, its partners and others in the sustainability industry see the practice — dubbed “peecycling” in national headlines — as a cheap, easy and less-destructive method for fertilizing plants than synthetic fertilizer and as a way for people to rethink their views on whether human waste should really go to waste. 

“We’re doing something that is somewhat disruptive and asking for people to look at things differently, change behaviors a little bit, sometimes around where they pee and why,” said Jed Blume, the institute’s development director. 

For Stickney, it looks like this: Rich Earth workers haul a tank of treated urine to the farm on a big truck before filling a smaller tank that Stickney can tow across the farm with a tractor.

“I could very quickly see how much darker green the grass was,” he said. “Dark green grass is happy grass — it means it has lots of nutrients. It’s very simple from my end, and it’s very soon that the results are visible, tangible.”

Federal funders are on board. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program has given the group close to $325,000 since 2013 to explore urine’s role in fertilizer practices. “This is innovative research, and it could lead to something that could really help farmers in a sustainable way,” said Candice Huber, who oversees the program’s grants for projects in the Northeast pairing researchers and farmers.

The Rich Earth Institute is going on its 12th year now, and the process of collecting urine and getting it to farms has evolved over time, Blume said.

The institute says it collects urine from 230 donors, who use one of two methods provided by Rich Earth. Some donors pee into a funnel screwed to a jug, cap the container and bring it to a drop-off spot. Others own a specialized toilet with a trap installed in the bowl that connects to a separate plumbing line. Urine in the trap gets diverted to a tank that institute workers pump out once or twice a year.

Next, the raw urine is transported from the collection site to a treatment center either on or off a farm. Through storage or pasteurization, at certain temperatures, the urine is treated to use as fertilizer. “The Rich Earth Institute has developed a computer-controlled pasteurizer with a high-efficiency heat exchanger to sanitize urine quickly and energy-efficiently,” the site says. 

Finally, the urine is put on a tractor and put on crop fields.  

“There’s been an interest both economically and environmentally in finding more sustainable, equitable, environmentally friendly ways of producing fertilizer, and since our bodies are all little fertilizer factories, folks are starting to connect the dots,” Blume said. “There’s multiple incentives for practicing nutrient recycling both economically and environmentally … The plants like it.” 

Synthetic fertilizer is typically made of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium and often produced through two processes, the Haber-Bosch method and traditional mining. Treated urine, which contains all three of those nutrients, is a low-cost and sustainable fertilizer source, according to Rich Earth.

One of the biggest concerns people have about urine fertilizer is pharmaceuticals, said Blume, but after doing a six-year research study with the University of Michigan and the University at Buffalo, the institute found “the pharmaceuticals don’t really accumulate in crop tissue at significant levels … Having that research energized us,” said Blume. 

Blume said the practice is becoming more socially acceptable, too. “The global fertilizer industry has seen a lot of volatility with regards to pricing and sourcing,” he said. “Once you explain what the nutrients are, they seem to be really interested in a sustainable form (and) being able to access those nutrients affordably.” 

Along with its farm partner program, the institute wants to offer people help through programs like “Urine My Garden,” which teaches gardeners to safely turn their pee into nutrients for their plants at home. And the institute is putting together a manual for farmers to do the same at scale. “We’ve developed a culture of practice around urine recycling,” said education director Julia Cavicchi. 

Part of their pitch, to organizations such as the Lake Champlain Basin Program, involves almost philosophical benefits.

“We can actually start to think about, how can we as humans come to heal the Earth with what our bodies produce in a way that is generous to the land,” Cavicchi said. “It’s a hopeful space to be working with in terms of using our bodies to heal.” 

Kimmerly Nace had a similar mindset when she and Abraham Noe-Hays created Rich Earth in 2012. Nace remembers how her neighbors would show up to her home in those early days, containers of urine in hand.

“It’s a very hopeful project,” said Nace, who no longer works at the institute. “People begin to feel that something that comes out of their body that’s normally been used as a waste can actually have value in agriculture.” 

“Farmers have been really receptive partially because farmers don’t have any ick factor around urine — it’s not different than any other animal manure for farmers,” said Nace. 

Nace is now the executive director of Brightwater Tools, a spinoff company that makes the technology Rich Earth uses to separate the urine from wastewater. Currently, she is working at a national level to shift the wastewater industry more toward nutrient recovery.

“We really did intend from the very beginning to be disruptive. To really shake it up and say wait, what are we doing here?” Nace said, comparing urine reuse to windmills and electric cars. 

Most of the grants Rich Earth has received from the USDA program are called partnership grants. The awards are capped at $30,000 and go to projects where researchers team up with a farmer to test hypotheses. Researchers set up their projects “so that they understand the needs of the farmer and how their work can really work on a farm.” 

Rich Earth has had seven partnership grants since 2013, several at close to the max funding amount.

“They had a lot of projects from us, and they’ve all been involving human fertilizer and testing it on crops and assessing the feasibility and bio-acidification,” Huber said. “Every year there’s discussion about the safety factors, the ability of using urine, as far as people who would be interested in eating products that are grown with that.” 

Huber said the federal program has full confidence in the institute’s work: “They are very good with their research in the way that they put it all together, and it’s really very thorough. All the regulations are being followed through the state. Safety-wise we trust that process.” 

Thor Retzlaff is the co-founder and chief marketing officer of Wasted*, a Burlington company that rents and sells water-saving porta-potties and toilets with eco-friendly features like bamboo toilet paper. 

Retzlaff believes in the mission behind the Rich Earth, which his firm works with.

More than a third of the company’s toilets divert urine from other waste. The company collects the urine, processes it and sends it to a local farm as fertilizer. “We’ve been working with the Rich Earth Institute and Brightwater tools since the conception of our company,” Retzlaff said. “They very much inspired us to go and start this thing.”

Retzlaff, Brophy Tyree, and Taylor Zehren began the company after attending a virtual summit hosted by Rich Earth Urine in August 2020. Over the course of three days, Retzlaff said, “they essentially brought together the world’s minds to talk about how valuable piss is.” 

He and the other co-founders wanted to take what they learned about urine diversion and combine it with a catchy business model. “From there what we did was identify Vermont as the state that allowed us to turn pee into fertilizer, so it was an obvious choice to move our business to Vermont,” he said.

Wasted* toilets are easy to identify by their bright orange color.

Retzlaff said urine-based fertilizer will catch on as evidence of its benefits grows. “There’s been a lot of data aggregating in the past 15 years that essentially says, ‘Hey, this is not only more sustainable than synthetic fertilizer but it’s more productive, it’s producing greater results. It’s a localized way of retaining the nutrients in any given ecosystem.’” 

Or as Stickney, the farmer in Putney, put it: “It’s just the simplest thing in the world to do.”

Corrections: An earlier version of this story misspelled Julia Cavicchi’s surname and misstated where the company Wasted* sends the urine it collects.

Read the story on VTDigger here: The future of fertilizer? Pee, says this Brattleboro institute..