Stream Smart Program Asks Engineers to Think “Outside the Box” Culvert

Above: Road engineers in the field for a Stream Smart training in Maine.

Below: Storms and resulting floods in December 2023 caused severe damage across the Northeast.

Photo credits: Maine Audubon

The traditional way a civil engineer thinks about a road-stream crossing is to engineer the roadbed and figure out how to move the water through it as cost-effectively as possible. “Can this pass a 25-year flood? I can calculate how big that culvert should be. A 100-year flood? No problem, I can calculate that too. It’s just hydraulics.” But Staying Connected Initiative (SCI) partner Maine Audubon says it is about more than just hydraulics, and road engineers in Maine are starting to listen.

“Stream Smart road crossings let the stream act like a stream,” says Sarah Haggerty, Conservation Biologist at Maine Audubon and manager of the Stream Smart program. “Instead of building the roadbed and figuring out how to move water through it, we’re asking engineers to start at the stream and figure out how to build a road over it.”

Through the program’s trainings and workshops, Maine Audubon is giving road engineers who typically do not have a background in stream ecology a chance to think “outside the box culvert” if you will, by starting with the stream instead of the road. In practice, this usually means building larger structures with open bottoms and accessible streambanks that allow clear passage of fish and wildlife, sediment and woody debris, and the higher flows that come with larger, more frequent storms.

Based on the U.S. Forest Service’s “Stream Simulation” design program, Stream Smart first launched in 2011. The workshops and field trainings have since reached over a thousand individuals across the state. In 2016, MaineDOT also developed the Municipal Stream Crossing Program to help municipalities cover the higher initial costs of upsizing crossings to meet Stream Smart design standards. Stream Smart crossings have now reconnected hundreds of miles of stream habitat for fish and wildlife through the grant program, which Maine Audubon and other partners help review applications for.

Despite its success, securing dedicated funding for Stream Smart remains a challenge, and the program relies on grants. Stream Smart receives funding from the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation and NRCS Regional Conservation Partnership Program, as well as from NOAA grants through subcontracts with other NGOs and from private foundations.

Haggerty says Stream Smart workshops have traditionally drawn mostly municipal staff, foresters and land trusts, but that recently more engineers are starting to attend from private firms, municipalities, and MaineDOT. She says this is due partly to targeted outreach to these groups, and partly to recent storms that have been particularly devastating for the state. 

One storm in December of 2023 dumped 5-7 inches of rain in western Maine, washing out dozens of roads and trapping holiday travelers. This proved to be a turning point, Haggerty says, causing more road engineers to hear about and take interest in what Stream Smart has to offer.

Maine Audubon is also starting to take Stream Smart into the classroom to train the next generation of engineers at the University of Maine. “At the request of municipalities, we’re now sharing a list of the engineers who have attended our hands-on field workshops. They’re getting lots of calls now.”

Keeping Nova Scotia and New Brunswick Connected: Conservation Through Collaboration on the Chignecto Isthmus 

Above: Protected and conserved lands on the Chignecto Isthmus, a critical corridor.

Below: A bobcat caught on camera in the Chignecto.

The Chignecto Isthmus is the narrow, low-lying bridge of land between the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. It is the route by which many plants and animals made their way to Nova Scotia following the last Ice Age, and it will continue to be important as species shift ranges in response to a warming climate. 

Early land conservation efforts in the area focused on the extensive wetlands of the Isthmus, but since the mid-2000s, growing attention has been paid to securing an upland corridor that would be at less risk of being inundated by rising sea levels. Securing this corridor has been a cooperative effort involving the Nova Scotia Departments of Environment & Climate Change and Natural Resources & Renewables, New Brunswick Department of Natural Resources and Energy Development, the Town of Amherst, the Nature Conservancy of Canada, Municipality of Cumberland County, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Ducks Unlimited Canada, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Cumberland Wilderness, JD Irving Limited, CFC Climate Forests Canada Inc., and numerous private landowners.

This work has accelerated and expanded geographic scope since 2019 with the help of Canada Nature Fund, support from Environment and Climate Change Canada and several of the partners mentioned above, as well as from the Nova Scotia Crown Share Land Legacy Trust and The Nature Conservancy of Canada. The recent signing of a new $28-million Nature Agreement between Environment and Climate Change Canada and the Province of Nova Scotia provides funds for continued collaboration amongst many conservation partners in the province, including those active in the Isthmus.

A map from the report showing states that either passed or introduced connectivity legislation as of 2023.

Policy is a powerful tool that both government and non-government entities are using to conserve and restore wildlife connectivity. This includes legislation that advances the goal of conserving and restoring connectivity either in intent or in effect.

Wildlands Network and the National Caucus for Environmental Legislators recently authored a report that tracks legislation passed by U.S. state lawmakers to conserve or restore habitat connectivity and advance wildlife-friendly infrastructure. The report, available here, includes only examples of state legislation that explicitly mention habitat connectivity and related terminology such as wildlife crossings and corridors.

The report’s authors found that at least 83 pieces of connectivity-related legislation have passed in the last 25 years since the first example in Florida. In addition to sharing examples of connectivity legislation nationwide, the report also compares different types of connectivity legislation and the various approaches that states have taken. This includes legislation focused specifically on wildlife road crossings, as well as legislation that mentions connectivity in relation to 30x30 goals and legislation that examines the role of state agency permitting decisions in conserving and restoring connectivity.

As of 2023, all U.S. states within the Northern Appalachian region either passed or introduced connectivity legislation. This is an encouraging trend!

Berkshire Wildlife Linkage Partnership Celebrates 10-year Anniversary

Above: No celebration is complete without cake! Those trees sure look tasty...

Below: Laura Marx, Climate Solutions Scientist with the Nature Conservancy and coordinator of the Berkshire Wildlife Linkage, addresses BWL partners on a wildlife walk as part of the festivities.

Photo credits: Meredyth Babcock

Over 30 individuals attended a gathering on March 1 in Chesterfield, Massachusetts to commemorate the ten-year anniversary of the Berkshire Wildlife Linkage (BWL) partnership. The day included a wildlife hike followed by lunch and the sharing of success stories from over the years. Click here to view a short compilation video of the event and these stories.

A linkage-scale coalition nested within the Staying Connected Initiative (SCI), Berkshire Wildlife Linkage partners have made significant progress in conserving and restoring a connected land and waterscape linking the Green Mountains in Vermont to the Hudson Highlands of New York via the Berkshire mountains of western Massachusetts and northwest Connecticut. This relatively narrow linkage connects both north into Canada as well as south into the Central Appalachians via the New York - New Jersey Highlands and Kittatinny Ridge, making it a key pinch point for continental-scale connectivity.

The Berkshire Wildlife Linkage is part of an interconnected network of climate-resilient lands and waters that includes some of the highest peaks in Massachusetts and Connecticut, cold-water streams that support brook trout, and calcium-rich bedrock in the valleys that is home to unique ecosystems like calcareous fens, hotspots for both regionally and globally rare species. The BWL is threated by ongoing fragmentation from roads and residential development as well as a high degree of parcelization, with the majority of land privately held in small acreages. This makes conservation efforts in the linkage all the more challenging and important.

To date, linkage partners have conserved nearly 900 acres with linkage due diligence funding and thousands more through their continuing collaborations. We have also collected data on wildlife movement and road infrastructure across the linkage that is being used by regional planning agencies and the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, among others, to guide their planning and their infrastructure work.

In their second decade, BWL partners aim to ensure that new land-protection in the region expands and connects existing forest cores to create a continuous corridor, allowing species to move and thrive now and in the future. The Nature Conservancy and MassWildlife recently updated the BioMap tool, which makes biodiversity, climate and other data available to inform land and water protection strategy and decision-making by state agencies, conservation organizations, municipalities and others. BWL partners also recently updated a map showing where individual BWL partners are active in the linkage and which connectivity strategies they are working on. These tools will be useful to partners working both locally in the linkage and at a statewide scale to implement Executive Order No. 618 on biodiversity conservation in Massachusetts, which sets conservation targets for the state to achieve by years 2030, 2040 and 2050.

Thank you to all our Berkshire Wildlife Linkage partners for a decade of hard work to protect and restore connectivity in the linkageand beyond! 

Special thanks to our Sustaining Partners in the Berkshire Wildlife Linkage who have contributed financially to support SCI partner coordination at both the linkage and regional scale:

·       The Nature Conservancy

·       Kestrel Land Trust

·       Mass Audubon

·       Housatonic Valley Association

·       Northwest Connecticut Land Conservancy

·       Berkshire Environmental Action Team

·       Vermont Association of Planning and Development Agencies

Wildlife Connectivity a Growing Focus in New Hampshire

Above: Photos of wildlife using road-stream crossings in New Hampshire's Upper Valley region.

Below: The focal area for the Upper Valley Connectivity Study.

Map and photos provided by Jesse Mohr of Native Geographic

*Note: This article was adapted from “Making Connections: Wildlife Corridors in New Hampshire,” a Taking Action for Wildlife blog post from May 21, 2024 which is accessible here.

Wildlife connectivity is a growing focus for New Hampshire conservation partners. Increasing habitat fragmentation from new roads, housing and other development threatens wildlife in New Hampshire and across the region, especially slow-moving species like spotted salamanders, species that depend on high adult survivorship like Blanding’s turtles, long range dispersers like bobcats, and species that already have limited populations like timber rattlesnakes.

Luckily, partners are working together to conserve and restore connectivity for these and other species, in New Hampshire and beyond. This includes collaboration between government, non-government and academic partners around transportation and wildlife connectivity. Collaboration amongst these partners has led to several projects in New Hampshire, including one to connect the White Mountain National Forest across a key stretch of Route 2 known as Bowman Divide, located within the New Hampshire portion of the large Staying Connected Initiative (SCI) linkage area connecting Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom to Northern New Hampshire and the Western Maine Mountains.

Other groups like the Upper Valley Land Trust are taking the initiative to “ground truth” wildlife corridors on a more local scale. The Upper Valley Connectivity Study is a collaboration of SCI partners Upper Valley Land Trust, New Hampshire Fish & Game, Vermont Fish & Wildlife, and Dartmouth College. Using a combination of remote sensing and on-the-ground studies in the form of tracking surveys and wildlife cameras, the goal is to provide information to prioritize land protection and wildlife crossings that provide functional connectivity between large, unfragmented habitat blocks and core areas. Portions of the Upper Valley are key for east-west wildlife connectivity between the White Mountains of New Hampshire and the Green Mountains of Vermont, with the I-91 highway and Connecticut River acting as significant barriers to movement.

The Upper Valley Connectivity Study was funded in part by grants, but additional funding through donations is required to complete the project. Donations may be made directly to the study on the Donate page of the Upper Valley Land Trust’s website.

Additional New Hampshire connectivity resources:

• New Hampshire Wildlife Corridors Report

Produced in response to Senate Bill 376 by the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department in collaboration with the New Hampshire Department of Transportation and Department of Environmental Services, this report includes information on existing and potential wildlife corridors, voluntary mechanisms affecting corridors, and relevant statutes and regulations. Click here to access the report.

• New Hampshire Wildlife Corridors Map

New Hampshire Fish & Game Department developed this map to help inform conservation planning efforts by identifying wildlife corridors and core habitats. Learn more and view the map here.

• New Hampshire Wildlife Corridors Brochure

Taking Action for Wildlife, a partnership of The University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension, the New Hampshire Department of Fish and Game, and the New Hampshire Association of Conservation Commissions, produced this brochure to educate and empower New Hampshire citizens to protect wildlife corridors. Access the online brochure here.

• Amphibian Road Crossing Project

The Harris Center coordinates amphibian crossing efforts in Henniker, Keene, Nelson, Peterborough, Swanzey, Westmoreland, Wilton and Winchester. There are also many other crossing sites in New Hampshire and elsewhere in the region that are monitored by individuals, families, or other grassroots groups. Many are in need of additional investigation. Access the project’s interactive map of amphibian road crossing sites here.