The Deeper Dig is a biweekly podcast from the VTDigger newsroom, hosted and produced by Sam Gale Rosen. Listen below, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify or anywhere you listen to podcasts.
Vermonters are still coming to terms with the devastating toll of this summer’s flooding, which inundated downtowns, destroyed homes and businesses, and caused two confirmed deaths. Considered from almost any angle, the impact of this extreme weather on the state has been massive.
Among the issues that environmental reporter Emma Cotton has been looking into is how the floods affected wildlife and ecosystems — and in turn, how those ecosystems impact the way flooding affects humans and our infrastructure.
In this episode, host Sam Gale Rosen talks to Emma about fish, turtles, salamanders, birds, wetlands, water quality, river efficiency (it’s not a good thing), climate change and more. Plus they visit a swamp.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Sam: Hi Emma!
Emma: Hey Sam!
Sam: So, to start, I think maybe we should acknowledge that some circumstances have changed since we first started recording this podcast.
Emma: That’s right. We began working on this episode when a lot of the flood waters were receding. It was a few weeks after that really big July flooding event. It’s worth noting that most of our recordings here are from that period, before there was another really big storm event that hit really hard in Middlebury and Rutland and the surrounding areas.
Sam: And that will become important later on in the episode. So Emma, when you were first reporting on the impacts of this really extreme flooding we’ve had in the last month, what were you expecting to learn about the impacts on wildlife?
Emma: I think, the reports of flooding were obviously so devastating for human communities, and the water levels were so high. I think I was expecting to hear, particularly for aquatic species — fish, turtles, beavers, aquatic birds — that they might have been really negatively impacted by this flooding. But I think the answers I got were a little bit more complicated than that.
Andrew Bouton: Those are juvenile bald eagles.
Emma: Wow.
Sam: A couple of weeks ago, Emma and I took a trip to flooded farm fields and wetlands in Cornwall. There, we met up with scientists from the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department.
Will Duane: I’m Will Duane. I’m the land acquisition coordinator for the Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Andrew Bouton: I’m Andrew Bouton. I’m the migratory game bird biologist.
Will Eldridge: Will Eldridge, aquatic habitat biologist.
Sam: The team of scientists was traveling around taking a look at state-owned properties to see how they were recovering from the floods.
We walked with them around an area near Otter Creek on July 31. We checked out some land that was part of the Cornwall Swamp Wildlife Management Area, which is owned by the state, as well as some privately owned farm fields. Both areas were still flooded pretty significantly, even weeks after the height of the rains and flooding during the week of July 9.
Emma: Floods are, of course, not good for farmers. They destroy crops and have been a source of a lot of pain for many farmers across the state with this flood. Over the years, some have approached Vermont Fish & Wildlife and other agencies to ask for a buyout.
But from the perspective of wildlife, there was a lot of activity in this field.
We could see these three juvenile eagles soaring above pools of water, and there were a good number — maybe a dozen or so — egrets, which are these majestic-looking, tall, white birds, standing around the edges of the pools, too.
Andrew: All your ducks and geese and shorebirds and wading birds, like you’ve got egrets out here that are taking full advantage of, probably, all the frogs and salamanders and things that are out there, which are also feeding on all the aquatic invertebrates. It’s all connected. The eagles could potentially be feeding on fish they were stranded out in these lower areas when the waters receded back into the river.
Emma: Osprey, too, maybe?
Andrew: And osprey, too.
Emma: Wow.
Andrew: It provides a lot more activity, a lot more habitat, for a lot of these bird species.
Emma: Andrew told us that the flooding actually benefited many aquatic birds to some degree. When the fields flooded, the water created more habitat and food for them. And if the water sticks around until the fall, migrating birds that stop over in Vermont will have more habitat.
This is a theme that I’ve seen in my reporting since the floods. In natural areas that people haven’t developed or significantly altered, wildlife was able to recover, and in some cases, even thrive during the flooding.
Wetlands are probably the most significant example of this because the habitat and everything that lives in it is used to being wet and does well in flooding.
But in areas where people have altered the habitat — particularly dredging streams or removing debris from the river — it’s harder for wildlife to recover.
Vermont is expecting to see more heavy precipitation as climate change progresses, and floods like this are likely to become more common. I think we’re still very far from saying that there’s a net positive impact on wildlife here.
Will Eldridge: I think it’s valuable to contrast what we’re seeing here in terms of impacts on wildlife versus what we expect or what we’ve seen up in like the mountainous areas. So, here, flooding can actually be a benefit to fish communities, right, because now they have access to these flood plains, so they can get up out of the flood. So they’re not actually being pushed out by the floodwaters, and they’re able to access new areas and new food resources. So we actually will see a boost in their production.
Emma: So this is Will Eldridge speaking, the aquatic habitat biologist. He said, in the wetlands, there’s a bottom-up effect in the food web, where the fish are feeding off of bugs and other things they couldn’t eat before. Birds are eating the fish, and in that way, the flood has actually stimulated the wildlife community here in the wetlands. But that’s a very different picture from what’s going on up in the mountains.
Will Eldridge: So there we have brook trout and stream fish — basically, those guys, the floods is a lot more stressful on them. They really are getting pushed around a lot more. And so, when we do surveys, before and after a flood, we’ll see reductions of like 50% in our stream fish communities. For them, they really are finding those spots that they can get out of the floodwater, so like log jams and behind boulders and things like that. We see losses of particularly young of the year. The babies are the ones that really don’t do very well in the mountains. So we only have like, like half the fish and maybe just the big ones left.
Emma: I also spoke to Jim Andrews, who manages the Vermont Reptile and Amphibian Atlas. He said the flood had a sterilizing effect on many mountain streams, which stripped them of amphibians and the little critters that salamanders and newts and frogs need to survive.
Jim Andrews: Also at this time of year, two-lined salamanders and spring salamanders — those are two of the stream salamanders — lay their eggs underneath rocks. They turn upside down, and they lay their eggs on the bottom surface of rocks in the stream bed. And those rocks would have been carried downstream and tumbled. So their effort to, you know, to breed and reproduce was probably wiped out early in those first sort of streams that they live in and lay their eggs in.
Emma: Jim said that, while the flood was taking place, some of those salamanders might search for higher ground and escape the flood. Many would have gotten washed downstream, and while some might survive and hike back up — Jim said he’s seen this before — those that return are coming back to unfamiliar homes, with so much debris having been washed away.
Jim: And then they’ve got to build up that detritus level again, leaf litter, et cetera, has to fall back into the stream. And then the insects that the caddisflies and the mayflies and all the stuff that live in the stream have to reestablish themselves. So it will take them a while to reestablish healthy populations.
Emma: Turtles face a similar problem. I spoke with Luke Groff, a herpetologist with Vermont Fish & Wildlife, and he said many turtles washed downstream may have trouble navigating their new habitat, particularly with finding mates or food. Luke told me he saw reports of dead or injured turtles, too, and those that have cracked shells after riding the turbulence in the river face increased risks of infection.
Luke Groff: Once the flooding is over, they get their wherewithal, and they figure out where they are. Some turtles may attempt to return home, and, depending on the distance, they may get back to their habitat. Other turtles may just stay put. So, you know, new turtles with different genetic diversity could help downstream populations by adding genetic diversity. So that’s sort of like a long-term benefit, but short-term benefits are a lot of negatives.
Emma: And even in the wetlands, Andrew, the aquatic bird biologist, said that waterfowl got lucky with this flood.
Andrew: If the flooding had happened a month earlier, it could have been detrimental for this year’s hatch. It would have flooded out all the net ground nesting birds. But it happened when it did. And that was largely after most birds had fledged, or had hatched. So now they have access to all these areas that they wouldn’t have had before. So there’s a lot more habitat. And if the water sticks around through the fall, it will provide a lot more stopover areas for migrating birds as they head back south.
Emma: So, there are some positives here but a lot of potential and realized impacts to wildlife. Jim said he’s really concerned about the vitality of certain types of salamanders, and wildlife in general, as rising temperatures and more extreme weather and pests and bad air quality — all the big and small impacts that come from climate change — worsen.
Jim: What’s going on now is the beginning of a significant change in our weather patterns. This is the first time I think most humans here in Vermont, and most of the wildlife populations, have seen this extended new pattern of weird weather, which I certainly fear is the beginning of a new norm as a result of climate change primarily but some other factors as well.
So yeah, I’m concerned. There are more ways, many more ways in which these changes can affect wildlife, than we could even imagine at this point. Wildlife has co-evolved with certain weather patterns, and we’re changing the rules of the game. And we’re gonna see changes, and it may be a few years before we see changes in some species. It may be a decade before we see changes in other species, but it’s gonna be short-term, immediate changes in some of those streams that were directly affected this time around.
Sam: So Emma, accepting that conditions are changing and going to continue to change, what can we do to help wildlife in the future?
Emma: I think the most obvious answer is that we can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases we’re emitting into the atmosphere and reduce the impacts of climate change, right? Vermont is already seeing more moisture than usual. According to the Vermont Climate Assessment, average annual precipitation in Vermont has increased by 21% since 1900, and it’s become more variable in the last decade.
Of course, climate change is a very big problem to tackle, and there are other tangible things we can do to protect wildlife during floods. And, according to the folks I’ve spoken with, putting those protections in place is actually often good for people, too.
One of the most significant things we can do, according to the river scientists I spoke with, is nothing. Rob Evans, who leads Vermont’s rivers program for the Agency of Natural Resources, said we should leave rivers and stream channels “beautifully messy.”
Rob Evans: If you don’t have to do anything in the river to protect human investments and infrastructure, then leave it alone. That’s really what we’re advocating for. Because our rivers are largely devoid of some of the habitat features — rock, wood, et cetera — due to a legacy of channelization practices that really just energized our rivers. And those energized rivers get in the way of habitat features because they’re energized, they’re over-deepened, over-steepened. And those high velocities just push wood and large rock downstream behind dams and bridges and culverts where they get removed. And then we have these efficient rivers, which is what we really don’t want because that’s not flood resilience. It’s the opposite.
Emma: So this helps people because waters don’t sort of gush through rivers and spill out into downtown areas. But it also helps wildlife. Here’s Will Eldridge, the aquatic habitat biologist, again.
Will Eldridge: There’s been this evolutionary development in our understanding of the role of wood in streams and rivers, and they are critical habitat features. Like Rob was saying, they do slow down water, and those pockets of slow water create refuge for fish during floods. So that’s where fish is gonna to hang out and find protection, when these high flows, these storms, come through. And, so it’s critical for them. When we go out to do a survey after a flood, we’ll find fish tucked up in those log jams because those are like the little pockets that they can hide out in.
Emma: So, in rivers, leaving them alone is important for wildlife. Something else that’s come up quite a bit here are wetlands and conserving more of them. In wetland areas, fish are able to recover and even thrive. Here’s Will again.
Will Eldridge: These swamps and these wetlands get seasonally inundated anyway. So generally, during the winter, you’ll get spring melt, and the wetlands will fill up, and they’ll be connected to the river. And when that happens, you actually get things like northern pike and other fish coming into these wetlands, and they’ll reproduce. They’ll actually start spawning in these wetlands. The adults will move out as the water drops, but those babies are still in here. They’re growing. They’re rearing in these wetlands all summer, and if it stays wet, they’ll actually be able to grow up and go back out to the river when it floods again in the fall. So having these spring, these mid-summer floods is actually not a bad thing. It’s a good thing because it keeps the wetlands wet. The fish need water, and so they’re able to survive. Some of them may go back out to the river early and help that population. But yeah, generally, the flooding, even in the middle of this summer, for the fish communities here in the wetlands, can be a good thing.
Emma: And there’s definitely a positive impact downstream to human communities. The Cornwall Swamp, where we visited that day, is a great example of this. During Tropical Storm Irene, the swamp is known to have saved Middlebury from flooding. The Otter Creek, which runs through the swamp, is 60% forested, and the river has access to more than 18,000 acres of flood plain, according to the Vermont Climate Assessment. That means the water can swell in the wetlands instead of rushing through a river channel. In total, the Otter Creek and its flood plains and forests are estimated to have a $12 million economic value for slowing the flood during Tropical Storm Irene.
Stephi Drago, a biologist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, has been studying this effect that the Otter Creek has had during flooding. I spoke to them about this last week, and they told me about another way wetlands help during flooding events: They can actually improve water quality.
Stephi Drago: So when our rivers have full access to our flood plains, they’re able to disperse over the land, and that slows down the water, which will then in turn slow down the velocities downstream, so that water is able to sit on the landscape for longer. And there’s this really important nutrient-cycling relationship between the river and the flood plain and our wetlands. And with that relationship, when the river is able to slow down, it’s able to drop out these fine sediment particles that have phosphorus and other nutrients bound to them onto the landscape. So it’s depositing nutrients on the landscape that’s great for habitat and the functioning of these wetland ecosystems while also helping filter out some of these nutrients from going down through the watershed and lessening some of the nutrient impact on, let’s say, Lake Champlain. So there’s important nutrient cycling and, of course, this dampening of floodwaters and this floodwater storage that’s really an important component of wetlands and why they’re important during these flood events that we have experienced.
Emma: Fish & Wildlife folks told us that, in that first flooding event in July, state-owned land on the Otter Creek was doing its job.
And I should say that the most recent flooding that impacted Middlebury complicates this picture a little but not as much as one might think. More on that in a minute.
Here’s Will Duane, land acquisition coordinator for the department, talking about the way that conserved state land functioned during the July storm.
Will Duane: Even after the rain stopped, we had reports from our land managers all up and down the Otter Creek that our properties were taking on water. That’s water that was not going into downtown Middlebury, not going into downtown Vergennes. So we’re learning more and more about this every time we, unfortunately, get one of these flood events. But, as it looks now, the properties did what we wanted them to do.
Emma: Now let’s talk about why Middlebury flooded recently. On Aug. 4, Middlebury received as much as 6 inches of rain over the course of several hours. Unlike the flooding in early July, this rain was localized, and it came down fast over specific areas. Middlebury and other towns and cities, like Rutland, flooded not because of rivers that overflowed their banks, but because the town’s stormwater systems could not process that much water at once.
These were flash floods, and the Cornwall Swamp, unfortunately, was not even really in play here. I asked Rob Evans, head of the state’s river program, about this, and he said that if the rain had been spread over a much larger area, the swamp would have helped, but most of the watershed didn’t receive that much precipitation.
Sam: So it seems like you keep running into some of the same kind of answers here: The basic processes we’re talking about, including flooding, are natural, so the natural systems are pretty well set up to withstand them and keep existing and thriving. On the other hand, with climate change, these natural events are more severe and frequent than they have been, which can introduce unpredictability, and can also, obviously, cause a lot more problems for people. Based on all you’ve heard from these various people, how are you thinking about this right now?
Emma: Yeah, it’s a really good question. So I think that keeping our natural environments as natural as we can keep them plays a role in resilience to climate change. So some of our interviewees have talked about keeping rivers attached to their flood plains, so they have space to move around and meander without bumping into a building or bumping into a constructed human center, is also good for wildlife. It allows wildlife space to recover, and potentially even, you know, create new habitat during a flood.
I don’t think that setting these areas aside is going to save us from flooding. And I don’t think that it’s going to save wildlife from negative impacts. You know, I think we’re talking about some potentially severe flooding happening in Vermont, at an increased frequency. And I think it’s going to take a lot more than setting land aside to protect us from this. And I think that it’s a much bigger picture conversation than just letting natural areas be natural. But from what we heard, I think, it does play a role, it helps wildlife recover and remain resilient and build back, and it sounds like that’s a benefit that helps people as well.
I think that the flash floods in Addison and Rutland recently also show us why land conservation is one tool in our toolbox but can’t help with certain types of flooding. Climate change is unpredictable and comes at us from a lot of different angles. But land conservation can help, and wetlands like the Cornwall Swamp will almost certainly continue to protect towns downstream in the future and provide benefits for wildlife.
Sam: I guess one of the obvious questions is: You can’t let all the rivers have their flood plains because Montpelier is built right there. Is it just a matter of degrees, leaving more of the rivers in these natural areas in a natural state? How do you address the fact that there’s some human habitation that’s obviously in fundamental conflict with some of these ideas and goals?
Emma: Yeah, of course. I mean, if you look at the history of Vermont, so many of our downtown areas are built on rivers. It’s just how we evolved as a state, right? So we’re never going to be able to fully restore the function of these rivers in a way that works for the rivers and the wildlife and people during flooding events. I think that it’s about making decisions as they come up. You know, we spoke to officials who are in conversations with farmers about maybe taking an edge of their farm field and restoring it to a wetland if the farmer is ready to do that.
I talked to officials who said, maybe it’s better that the field next to a river, or that the land next to a river, is a soccer field instead of, you know, a wastewater treatment facility. So I think it’s making those sort of incremental decisions as we can make them and thinking critically about the land that’s closest to the river and most susceptible to flooding. You know, people are having some really broad conversations about moving towns and moving cities, and maybe that’s possible one day, but I think, for now, it’s sort of taking steps toward a more resilient flood plain.
[MUSIC]
This episode of the Deeper Dig was produced by me, Sam Gale Rosen, and reporter Emma Cotton with help from VTDigger interns Paige Fisher and Max Scheinblum.
For more episodes, and for more of Emma’s reporting, visit VTDigger.org.
I’m Sam Gale Rosen. This is the Deeper Dig. Thanks for listening.
Correction: The audio of this story misidentifies where biologist Stephi Drago works — they work at the Natural Resources Conservation Service. This error was reflected in the text of an earlier version of this story.
