The Vermont Reptile & Amphibian Atlas 2025 Fundraiser

Six years ago, we organized our first fundraiser. In addition to funding our educational outreach, data gathering, and conservation efforts, the fundraiser was also motivated by a decline in our regular grant funding, a pressing need to get all our data digitized for future use and to assign accurate latitude and longitude coordinates to older records. Our fundraiser was a huge success, so we now hold annual winter fundraisers in hopes of raising $20,000 or more to support Herp Atlas projects that are not adequately funded by our grants. One new concern for this coming year is what will happen to our grants that come from the federal level (US Fish & Wildlife and the US Dept of Forests, Parks, and Recreation).

Donations can be made in a few ways:

*If your fund requires that a check must be sent directly to Vermont Family Forests (P.O. Box 254, 14 School Street, Suite 202A, Bristol, VT 05443), please notify them that your donation is for the Vermont Reptile and Amphibian Atlas and please also contact us directly about your donation.

**Checks should not be made out to the Vermont Reptile and Amphibian Atlas. We can’t cash them that way.

No giveaways or promotions are offered in exchange for any donations made to this GoFundMe.

This year’s photo

Our photo this year (at the top of the page) shows a male Jefferson Salamander. The excellent photo was taken by Kiley Briggs. As many of you know, long ago, Jefferson and Blue-spotted Salamanders hybridized. The hybrids are almost entirely female, and they mate with the pure males of either of the two parent species. The females can be hard to identify to species, but males (identified by the squared and swollen vent) show characteristics that are typical of the pure species. The male Jeff above shows the solid gray-brown color, wide squared snout (like an old Volvo), a laterally-compressed tail, and a lighter (sometimes golden) stripe along the top of the tail that are typical of the species. When we find females, we often need to consider who they are breeding with, and where they were found, in order to make an educated guess about which of the two species they are most like. Blue-spotteds are primarily a lowland marsh or wooded swamp species. Jeffs are primarily found in or near upland semi-permanent pools surrounded by rocky hardwoods. Jeffs are also very sensitive to acidic soils and water, so you won’t find them in a spruce/fir forest. Using a combination of field marks, their company, and their habitat, we put females into one of two groups. Those females that are found with Blue-spotted males in their habitat type are put into the Blue-spotted Group and those females that are found in classic Jeff habitat and appear to be breeding with Jeff males are categorized as Jefferson Group. It is a pleasure and a relief to find some pure males like the one in Kiley’s photo to help with identification.

Ongoing goals for 2025

The ultimate goal of the Atlas is to gather and disseminate the data that are needed on the reptiles and amphibians of Vermont in a way that involves and informs Vermont individuals and organizations so that they can become more informed and effective stewards of wildlife habitat.

We will continue to encourage everyone to photograph and report the reptiles and amphibians they see in Vermont.

We will review all records, correct any misidentifications, answer any questions, and respond to the contributors with useful conservation suggestions when appropriate.

We will continue to work with the local press to get information out on the natural history and conservation of all of Vermont’s reptiles and amphibians. Although reptiles and amphibians are our area of expertise, they serve as vehicles for the conservation of all living things in Vermont.

We will continue to offer field trips and presentations and work with both private organizations and government agencies to help promote the conservation of reptiles and amphibians specifically and all wildlife in general.

We will continue to update our website, make additional videos, and make that information available to the public.

Short-term goals for 2025

Coordinates

We continue to add latitude and longitude coordinates to all records of common herps from Vermont. All new records have lat longs assigned to them and all rare and unusual species have been assigned coordinates, but older records of more common herps still need lat longs assigned to them. We are also reviewing all reports of rare species to make sure the lat long coordinates are accurate. We will have two young wildlife biologists working part-time this winter on this project.

Field Surveys

We will personally fill in new town records or update historic records for ~fifty Vermont towns.

Publications

We have updated all of our reptile & amphibian distribution maps; we now need to update the text and get the maps online and in print, and publish an update to our Vermont Reptile and Amphibian Atlas.

What progress have we made recently?

Updates

Regular updates and improvements have continued to be made to our website by Kate Kelly and Kir Talmage. In addition, we send out periodic Herp Update newsletters to a group of over 400 people and the local press. These Updates get added to our website and our Facebook page (2,800 followers) so that they are available to anyone. We updated our frog calling time graphs with the help of graduate student Rosy Metcalfe, and these are now available on our website. In addition, our quick photo reference pages, formerly available only as PDFs, are now also available as webpages.

Coordinates

All our new records are entered into our database with latitude and longitude coordinates for point mapping. Some smartphone photos show us almost exactly where the photos came from. This was not always the case. Older records most often came with physical descriptions of roads or landmarks describing the location. We have now finished reviewing and assigning of lat longs to all reports of S1 through S4 species. Records with lat longs assigned now total over 109,000 of over 125,300 records. This is 7,000 more than last year at this time and 13,000 new coordinates since 2022. We continue to add lat longs to older reports of S5 species. All towns in Rutland and Addison Counties have been finished along with all the towns bordering Lake Champlain. We are very pleased with this progress. This project will be ongoing for a few more years.

Contributed records from the public

From October 1, 2023, through August 30, 2024, another 4,388 records from 1,260 contributors were added. This puts the total of new Vermont records entered over the previous twenty-three months at 8,026 contributed by approximately 1,900 different people.

Sightings during this period came from 255 of the 256 towns, cities, grants, and gores and all Vermont counties. They included all of Vermont’s native species except Boreal Chorus Frog (probably extirpated from Vermont, last reported in 1999). Working with Vermont Fish & Wildlife, we managed to find a North American Racer. It is the first report of this species since 2014. We also received and entered a report of another racer. This was a sighting from 2010 in Guilford.

Over the past 23 months, we have entered 99 verified reports of S1 species, 380 verified reports of S2 species, 639 reports of S3 species, 428 new reports of S4 species, and 5,189 reports of S5 species. In addition, we have added negative reports (unsuccessful searches), unverified reports, reports of significant crossing areas, reports of significant herptile habitat, and data from long-term monitoring sites into our database.

Targeted survey efforts

During this period, we personally visited 83 towns (or cities, gores, or grants) to gather new records. Many survey trips focused on those “towns” (including cities, gores, and grants) that have had the least survey effort. This is usually the result of low numbers of residents. Other trips focused on species that are not often reported by citizen scientists. These include the Northern Dusky Salamander (Desmognathus fuscus) and Spring Salamander (Gyrinophilus porphyriticus). We filled in many data gaps (species/town combinations) with these trips.

Field trips, presentations, and media outreach

During this time, I met with writers and press for a number of interviews and news pieces on Vermont herptiles. These include six shows on Vermont herptiles for WCAX TV, two interviews on Vermont herptiles for Vermont Public’s Vermont Edition, coverage in Vermont Digger, and multiple other media presentations.

We also did multiple trainings for staff of the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) and the VT Habitats and Highways course. We helped lead herp field trips for the Northeast Natural History Conference and the International Conference on Ecology and Transportation.

We led field trips and/or gave in-person presentations for the Lewis Creek Association, Burr and Burton Academy, Grafton Natural History Museum, the Salisbury Conservation Commission, Otter Creek Audubon Society, Dead Creek Wildlife Festival, the Herricks Cove Wildlife Festival and others.

Exotic species

Every year we receive a few reports of non-native reptiles and amphibians that were either released or escaped pets or were accidentally transported via boats, trucks, RVs, and cars.

Between October 1, 2023 and August 30, 2024 we received a report of a Cosmopolitan House Gecko (Hemidactylus mabouia) in Swanton, one Cuban Brown Anole (Anolis sagrei) in Burlington and one in South Burlington, a Common Side-blotched Lizard (Uta stansburiana) in Essex Town, an African Spurred Tortoise (Centrochelys sulcata) in Thetford, a Red-footed Tortoise (Chelonoidis carbonaria) in Newark, and four Pond Sliders (Trachemys scripta). The sliders were found one each in the towns of Burlington, Duxbury, Pittsford, and Winooski. Pond Sliders are a common pet turtle species that has become invasive in southern New England. As our climate continues to warm, they could become invasive in Vermont.

Hypothetical species

We received no additional reports or photos of Eastern Box Turtles (Terrapene carolina) over the last 23 months. Our most recent reports were in 2021. They may be (or may have been) part of a population of Vermont natives, but we won’t know for sure until we capture one and do some genetic comparisons.

We received a report of a Blanding’s Turtle (Emydoidea blandingii) from Randolph. Although this species could potentially be found within our range, all previous reports and this one appear to be released pets.

New locations

We personally found a dead Eastern Ratsnake (Pantherophis alleghaniensis) on Route 7 in Pittsford adjacent to the Pomainville Wildlife Management Area. This is the first documented report from Pittsford. We reached out to town residents using Front Porch Forum but did not get any other reliable reports from Pittsford. We also received our first report of a Four-toed Salamander (Hemidactylium scutatum) from Pittsford, but this is less of a surprise, since the distribution of this secretive and small salamander is not well known. Common Watersnake (Nerodia sipedon) continues to show up at a few new locations. Springfield is the most recent addition. We also filled in many data gaps (town/species combinations) for many more common species.

Newly historic

Since this atlas effort has been ongoing for over 25 years, we now find it necessary to update species/town combinations where a given species has not been reported from a given town in over 25 years.

Data sharing

This past year, we provided Vermont distribution records of herptile species to the US Geological Survey, the Vermont Endangered Species Committee, The Nature Conservancy of Vermont, the Vermont Land Trust, Vermont Fish and Wildlife, the Green Mountain National Forest, the University of Vermont, multiple graduate students and faculty at academic institutions in and out of Vermont, and the steering committee for a future Monkton Town Forest. Wood Turtle records were again provided to Kiley Briggs of the Orianne Society and distribution data on a variety of herptiles was provided for the Natural Resource Conservation Service for land under their conservation easements.

We continue to be more aggressive about providing data to contributors from target towns where we need more data. What we provide to these people is a list of common reptiles and amphibians that are expected to be in their towns but have not yet been photo-documented. For towns that have a good chance or providing habitat for rarer species, we include our list of herptiles that should always be documented. Like last year, we provided this sort of data to residents of over forty towns. Many of these exchanges resulted in new town records.

The Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative and the Colby Hill Ecological Project continue to get exported monitoring data and reports, but they paid for the monitoring and reports.

Significant sightings are shared with state herpetologist Luke Groff as they are received and reports of all S1-S3 herptiles are forwarded to Vermont Fish and Wildlife annually.

Awards

Environmental Excellence Award for the Monkton Amphibian and Wildlife Crossing, from the Federal Highway Administration (with others). 2017

Award for Excellence in Herpetofaunal Conservation, from Northeast Partners in Reptile and Amphibian Conservation. 2017

Sally Laughlin Award for the Protection of Threatened and Endangered Species in the state of Vermont, from the Secretary of the VT Agency of Natural Resources. 2019

USDOT, Federal Highway Administration Environmental Excellence Award, for Vermont Highways and Habitats, Road Ecology Training for Transportation Professionals (with others). 2022

Thank you for your support!