11-2SG Cold Hollow to Canada
Grant Round:
2011 September
Grant Program:
Small Grants
Grant Type:
Other Grants
Grant amount requested:
2,494.00
Grant amount awarded:
$1,000.00
Attachments
Please provide a brief description of the project for which you seek funding.
This project will engage community members as "citizen scientists" in an extension of CHCs on-going efforts to learn more about places in our region important to wildlife. We will host a tracking training, organize ongoing monitoring groups, and build a website for data collection. Participating community members will take part in a one day training program taught by a local ecologist and wildlife tracker that covers basic tracking skills, as well as the protocol for data collection. Teams of community members will walk, twice per winter, defined 1-2 mile road segments and document the tracks of focal mammal species they observe. The use of an established protocol will provide data uniformity, increasing credibility with the project's target audience (as outlined in indicators of success). CHC, with assistance from partner organizations and a web consultant, will create a web-based map and database in which volunteers can enter their data. This website will be made public to better inform and engage community members in wildlife populations and their movement throughout our region. Over time, we will have amassed enough data to determine important road crossings in our seven town region and assist town and regional conservation planning efforts. This project is an extension of our regional monitoring efforts initiated in 2009. This year, volunteers will monitor ~6 permanent "transects" in our region. These transects in the forest interior; will help us learn about wildlife habitat in our region. Now, though, we are interested in learning about wildlife movement between different habitats, as animals cross roads. CHC learned about a successful five year effort undertaken by Salisbury, Vermont's Conservation Commission, and modeled this project after their work. It has been developed in collaboration with the Staying Connected Initiative and Salisbury Conservation Commission. In summer, we pitched the project to the core group of our membership and conservation commissions to gauge interest and engage leaders. On Sept 1, we co-hosted TrekEast, one man's trek from Florida to Canada on behalf of wildlife habitat connectivity, and asked for signups. We now have a list of 18 interested participants. We hope to conduct the training in late fall 2011 with the first round of monitoring during the winter of 2011-12. We would host a gathering in late winter to check-in with participants and answer questions. The project would continue for five years.
Project Summary
Cold Hollow to Canada received a grant in 2011 to pay for materials and training to engage community members as “citizen scientists” to learn more about places in the region important to wildlife through tracking training, ongoing monitoring of tracks and road crossings, and a website platform to enter and share collected data.
Primary Issue Area:
Land & Water
Please break-down/categorize the program expenses:
| Proposed Item | Estimated $ Amount | Would grant funds be used for this item? | Type Of Expense |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wildlife tracking professional trainer | $200.00 | Yes | Materials |
| Wildlife tracking trainer mileage reimbursement | $50.00 | Yes | Materials |
| Tracking book-$19.95 + tax each (participants pay $10, see below) | $450.00 | Yes | Materials |
| Tracking ruler $6.00 each | $180.00 | Yes | Materials |
| Clipboard $2.00 each | $60.00 | Yes | Materials |
| Refreshments for follow-up gatherings | $60.00 | Yes | Materials |
| Website Development-75 hours (*rate is reduced $12/hr. for non-profit) | $1,350.00 | Yes | Materials |
| Website hosting $6/month | $144.00 | Yes | Materials |
Whom does your group need to make this project happen?
Please explain how your group will engage members from your community in this project.
The Staying Connected Initiative's contractor working in the Northern Greens will help us publicize and organize this project. As we mentioned, we have already held several meetings with members and partnering conservation commissions to engage participants, as well as a well-attended community event to highlight habitat connectivity. This project will actively engage 30 community members in data collection. The data collected will be made directly available to planning and conservation commissions to better inform their efforts, as well as to the general public on the website. A partnership between CHC and the Vermont Natural Resources Council (VNRC) is already underway to engage planning commissions in our region in improving protection of wildlife; this partnership will utilize the database created through this project. News and updates on the project will go out through CHC's quarterly newsletter that reaches over 200 members of the community. Contacts at local media outlets will also be used to gain publicity of the project to the broader community. Community members will also be engaged through CHC's web based presence---a clearing house for information regarding the project, as well as the greater work being done by CHC in the region---which will be supported through this grant. To clarify the number of people engaged in the project (above): 30 participants in direct monitoring efforts; 50 town officials (planning and conservation commission members); broader engagement in the community through the sightings website advertised to our email list of 200+ people.
If your group receives a NEGEF Grow grant, how do you plan to pay for remaining expenses?
| $ Amount | Source |
|---|---|
| $300.00 | Participant fee ($20/ea.) to match trainer cost |
| $1,500.00 | Staying Connected Initiative Project Coordination |
| $150.00 | Participant fee for tracking books |
Please list these materials or services
| $ Amount | Item |
|---|---|
| $200.00 | Follow-up get together for trackers (2 evenings) |
| $900.00 | Website development consultant volunteer match |
Please describe what changes will occur in your community and its environment when your group's project is successful.
As mentioned, this project will build off of data collection being done by CHC members as part of the Keeping Track program (KT), which engaged 30 people over the past two years in an eight day training program to establish 1-2 mile transects in our region and record the sustained presence of mammal populations. Where that project gathers data on core habitat and resident populations, the Road Crossing project described here will focus on lands that connect core habitats, thereby addressing landscape connectivity. Together, the two will provide a comprehensive database. In the past, we were not able to serve everyone interested in participating in KT because of their financial or time constraints. We hope to make this project more affordable, with your help, and have designed it to involve a time commitment that we hope is more manageable for working people. This project will also build on work done by the Staying Connected Initiative that used GIS modeling to map potential wildlife corridors across our region. This road crossing project (in combination with the KTMP) will provide ground truthing to our partner's modeling work. The overarching goal of these two projects is 1) to create a source of credible data for local planning and conservation commissions that inform their efforts and allow them to better protect important wildlife areas, 2) engage a broader spectrum of community members as active participants in conservation efforts and, 3) provide greater leverage for CHC's town planning and land conservation efforts, as we work to protect priority areas. Short-term indicators of success include the number of participants who take the class and the number of participants who volunteer to monitor a road segment. Over the longer term, they include the number of years volunteers monitor their road segment, the town plan or zoning language that is updated to include important road crossings, and the number of conservation easements secured near road crossings.
Please list how many people in your community your group expects to actively engage in this project.
280
What relevant skills does the group need (but does not currently have access to) to help move the initiative forward?
Community members who become engaged in the Road Crossing project will undergo a similar training program to that of the KTMP, although abridged given the different nature of this project. CHC also requires some advanced web-based skills (website development, coding, etc.) that is not presently available within our membership (as described above), but may be obtained from a member of the community who work in this industry and has expressed their willingness to assist CHC at a reduced cost.
What relevant skills do current members of the group have to help move the initiative forward?
Thirty members of CHC have already undergone intensive field-based training in wildlife tracking though the KT program. The training of participants in the Road Crossing project will be run by a local ecologist who specializes in wildlife tracking and assisted by KT participants. We will adapt Salisbury's protocol for our region and can build from their expertise and experience. We have hosted one of Salisbury's conservation commissioners at our July meeting and he shared with everyone their successes and lessons learned. The Staying Connected Initiative has already developed a web-based system similar to the one described in this project for the general public to record and post wildlife sightings in our region (anecdotal wildlife sightings). This will serve as a model for the web-based portion of this project. Web development within the organization is presently limited, however CHC has engaged a community member who does this work professionally and has agreed to donate a portion of his time as an in-kind match as part of this grant.