The Nulhegan Watershed Conservation and Education Initiative at Work

Stratford students at work in the Silvio O. Conte Wildlife Refuge (Oct 2012).

Hard at work with loppers, bow saw, and a swing blade, one eighth grade student from Stratford, New Hampshire paused to share the complexities of conservation work as he had begun to see them, “Last spring, we were planting trees. Now, we are cutting trees down.”  Through the Nulhegan Watershed Conservation and Education Initiative, supported by grant funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Nature of Learning Program, seventh and eighth grade students from the communities surrounding the Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge’s Nulhegan Basin Division in Brunswick, Vermont, now have first-hand experience with the techniques of conservation management.  The intent of the initiative is to provide greater access to the recreational and educational resources available through the Refuge system, with a focus on conservation concerns.  In the first year of the Initiative, students studied the Atlantic salmon, native to the Nulhegan basin, and how climate change, and other environmental factors that contribute to increased water temperature, affect the suitability of habitat for the Atlantic salmon.  In 2012, students extended their understanding of conservation from the water to the entire watershed.  Led by NorthWoods Stewardship Center, and supported by staff at the Silvio O. Conte Refuge and participating organizations, including Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department and Trout Unlimited, students have engaged in service projects and learning opportunities in their backyard Refuge, each starting with this question: What is the goal of conservation?

In the Spring of 2011, students asked this question on the banks of the Connecticut River, in the northern reaches just upstream from where the Nulhegan River tributary joins, looking down a steep eroded bank and the wide quiet sweep of the River.  Here, the answer was clear.  Agricultural grazing had, over many years, led to the de-stabilization of the river bank, which was getting smaller and steeper as the soil and its vegetative cover eroded.  Nearby agricultural land as well as the state highway made this particular area a conduit for runoff, which flowed freely to the Connecticut River.  The addition of sediment, as well as, the associated agricultural inputs of nitrogen and phosphorous degrade water quality and serve as an important limiting factor for the region’s native cold-water fish species. The answer that day was to plant trees.  Students planted white pine and white ash saplings, which though slow growing, are well-suited to the sandy environment, with a substantial root system to provide stability to the eroding bank.  It is hard work to plant trees, but the conservation goal was clear: improve water quality by stabilizing the riverbank and enhance fish habitat by providing a future source of shade and woody debris.

Later, in the Fall of 2012, these same students found themselves in the Nulhegan Basin Division Woodcock Management Demonstration Unit 1, a 134-acre site managed for American woodcock and other early successional-dependent species.  To understand the goals of conservation this day, students needed to learn about the unique habitat requirements of the American woodcock.  Woodcock need areas for courtship, nesting, foraging, and roosting – all within a half-mile of each other.  Refuge Biologist Rachel Cliche helped students understand these various requirements.  Feeding areas with their dense growth of brush and shrubs, provide a moist soil home to earthworms, the woodcock’s preferred food source.  Roosting areas, on the other hand, are less dense, with scattered shrubs, briars or weeds.  In these areas, woodcock can roost on the ground, with overhead cover to protect them from airborne predators like owls and raptors, while simultaneously allowing a ground-level view to spot the approach of ground predators, like weasels and fox.   On this Fall day, students helped create singing grounds, those open areas, close to dense cover, where the male woodcock can perform his dawn and dusk courtship flight.  This unusual aerial display and singing ritual is used to attract females.   With this conservation goal in mind, the method was clear – in order to return the half acre site to open singing ground, these students had to swizzle, lop, chop and saw.

Learning about wildlife, their habitat requirements, and threats to survival, is an important first step in understanding methods of conservation management.  Through the Nulhegan Watershed Conservation and Education Initiative, students are beginning to understand the needs of wildlife. In the Spring, students were challenged to think like an Atlantic salmon, imagining their epic spawning run from the Atlantic Ocean to the upper Connecticut River tributaries, and to imagine the obstacles to that journey.  While working on the banks of the Connecticut River, students imagined what the native brook trout needed – cold, clean water with shade and downed logs to hide under.  On Management Unit 1, students were able to imagine the odd courtship rituals of the American woodcock.   By engaging in service and learning, it was clear to that student, and to his classmates, that in conservation work, sometimes we must plant trees, and sometimes we must cut them down.

To learn more about the habits and habitat of the American woodcock or about the Nulhegan Watershed Conservation and Education Initiative, contact maria@Northwoodscenter.org.