This story by Liberty Darr was first published in The Citizen on Dec. 24, 2025.
The Charlotte Conservation Commission is hoping to secure some big bucks to do what they say is a much-needed revamp of the town’s wildlife corridor map. They are anticipating that the work could cost roughly $25,000 to complete.
According to Claudia Mucklow, chair of the commission, the last time the town had significant wildlife mapping completed was in 2008. She noted that several different state agencies, including the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife, biologists and ecologists from the University of Vermont and the Lewis Creek association, were involved in the final product.
“This was a pretty extensive plan, and at the time, I think it was probably one of the best maps that any town had,” she said. “Some of the work dates even back further, close to 20 years. So, it’s time that we update the map to see how accurate it still is.”
Mucklow noted that the mapping coincides with, and is technically mandated by, a piece of 2016 legislation known as Act 171, which states that towns and municipalities must identify significant forest blocks and habitat connectors in town plans in order to receive approval from a regional planning commission. While a town plan doesn’t inherently craft new zoning regulations or policies, it is a document that town leaders look to for guidance.
Forest blocks are areas of contiguous forest and other natural communities and habitats, such as wetlands and ponds that are unfragmented by roads, development or agriculture. But equally important to maintaining these pieces of habitats is preserving connections between them.
“These forest blocks that we have in town, they support wildlife, all kinds of cats, deer, whatever, and they need to be connected,” Mucklow said. “And if there is no connection, these forest blocks become islands, and they’re not really viable to support a lot of wildlife. Wildlife moves for a variety of reasons.”
Mucklow noted that although the town’s current map is severely out of date, it is not entirely obsolete. For example, she said, many of the forest blocks still exist, but there is no real comprehensive idea of where the corridors are on the old map.
Pete Demick, another member of the conservation commission, has been documenting some of the creatures, big and small, wandering through Charlotte’s natural areas. He’s set up trail cameras around different town areas, including within willing private property owners. Roughly 22 cameras over a roughly five-month period last year — and a few months in 2023 — picked up bobcats, bears and deer, among other species of animals.
“It’s been an incredible success,” Demick said. “The amount of wildlife that’s in Charlotte would stun people because they don’t see it.”
But for scientists at the Agency of Natural Resources, it’s not that surprising. According to the Shelburne News, which has been reporting on the issues of forest blocks in the neighboring town and interviewed Jens Hilke, a planning biologist at the agency, the Champlain Valley is actually more biologically diverse than forested areas in the heart of the Green Mountains.
Mucklow said the mapping work, completed by an outside consulting firm, could take roughly a year to complete, depending on the contractor, and would likely utilize GIS tools to identify the corridors.
The commission, for a second year in a row, has asked the selectboard to include $25,000 in their budget allocation for the work, but the board has made no promises up until this point. Mucklow said the commission has launched its own fundraising effort, with the hope of potentially reducing that monetary request, which could be more palatable to voters.
“If you talk to people in Ferrisburgh, they’re like, ‘Come on, Charlotte, stay the Greenbelt,’” Demick said, noting the development pressures that have mounted in recent years. “Just wow, has it changed over the last 15 years. You know, and it’s just forcing all the wildlife to move.”
