New England Cottontail Monitoring at White Memorial and Throughout Their Range

New England Cottontail, Range and Population Monitoring Focus Areas
(Top image by John Huff Foster Daily Democrat via AP, bottom image by USFWS).

Habitat management performed throughout the range of New England Cottontail (NEC) and assessing the conservation status of the species is being partially measured during the winter of 2016 - 2017 at White Memorial.  A total of two plots were selected on the property, which are located at Apple Hill and on North Shore Road.  The Apple Hill plot is being managed to ensure adequate habitat for NEC and other early successional habitat species.  The North Shore Rd. plot is a grassland that has been permitted to revert to early successional habitat through ecological succession.

Transects were flagged using orange and yellow surveyor tape
on the Apple Hill Plot on East Shore Rd., Morris, Litchfield Co., CT, USA.

This project is coordinated by the NEC Technical Committee and researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey.  The monitoring objectives are to assess occupancy rates of both cottontail species (Eastern and NEC) throughout the NEC range, observe how this occupancy status changes through time, and to determine how management activities influence the changes in the occupancy status of both species.  White Memorial's two plots were part of a total of 283 plots selected throughout CT, MA, ME, NH, NY, and RI.  Connecticut currently conserves the largest number of NEC populations in the habitats of highest priority and is surveying the bulk of the total plots (83 plots).  The plots consist of 200 meter long transects that are spaced every 30 meters, ultimately sampling piece of land approximately 2 hectares in size.  The plots were visited at least 24 hours after a fresh snowfall, when the temperature remained below 30 degrees Fahrenheit, and with very little wind or no rain.  Each plot was visited a total of 4 times within a 4 - 6 week time period.  The location of cottontail scat was georeferenced and collected for future molecular analysis to determine the species.  

Cottontail scat and tracks observed in fresh snow.

Various habitat measurements were recorded throughout the plot that described the vegetation density at various heights, land management, and land cover types.  Generally, the vegetation favored by both cottontail species is very dense and can consist of several thorny plant species, which makes working in them very labor intensive and at times dangerous.

Habitats in the Apple Hill Plot on East Shore Rd., Morris, Litchfield Co., CT, USA

We wore protective clothing consisting of chainsaw chaps, leather gloves, and heavy winter coats.  Several volunteers supported this project at every stage.  Jared Franklin, Ireland Kennedy, Rachelle Talbot, and Ben Vermilyea helped with the initial plot layouts in the autumn.  Jared couldn't get enough of walking through the pucker-brush so he returned to help with the surveillance portion.  Liyanna Winchell, Naomi Robert, and Nicki Hall decided to brave the single digit temperatures and searched for cottontail spore.  We observed several areas within the plots where scat was deposited very densely while other areas had little to no spore, all of which was deposited within approximately 36 hours of the snowfall cessation.  Initially, there did not appear to be strong relationship between the habitat characteristics and spore density within each plot, which suggests that animals congregated in these microhabitats.

Nicki Hall (front) and Naomi Robert were a couple of the brave souls who bushwhacked through some of the densest, thorniest habitats and during days when the daily high temperature remained in the single digits.

Ben Vermilyea Wins First Place Scholarship for His Project Titled "Do Invasives Earthworms Impact Water Quality?"

I am pleased to announce that Ben Vermilyea received the first place scholarship from the Natural Resources Conservation Academy for his project titled "Do Invasives Earthworms Impact Water Quality?"  Ben was awarded scholarship yesterday (March 15, 2016) at the Connecticut Conference on Natural Resources at the Unversity of Connecticut.

Congratulations Ben on a job well done!

Do Invasive Earthworms Impact Water Quality?

Ben Vermilyea attended the Natural Resource Conservation Academy (NRCA) at UCONN this past summer 2015.  He approached White Memorial seeking a community partner so that he could apply what he learned at the NRCA.  I have been interested to explore if exotic earthworms could increase soil erosion near headwater streams thereby impacting water quality when they incorporate the mineral layers and consuming leaf litter on the surface.  We've observed leaf litter loss in some areas on the property so severe that by the end of the summer the soils are nearly completely denuded of leaf litter before the next leaf litter crop.  This exposes the soil the air and encourages soil erosion either by the falling water droplets hitting the soil or by sheeting.  Ben and I developed a novel method for measuring soil erosion.  We installed fabric hammocks along the stream bank that collected soil particles before they entered a stream that flowed near an earthworm invaded area and compared that data with another stream that was not impacted by earthworms.  We observed some important patterns.  The earthworms indeed changed the soil properties.  Although we did not observe significant differences between the weights of the soil particles entering both streams, we performed a power analysis which suggested a significant difference could be detected if we increased our sample size to a total of 451 hammocks samples.  We feel this it is feasible to acheive this in future research, so stay tuned.  Obviously, this is based on certain assumptions but we may not need to as many samples if we were to compare headwater streams that flow through regions that are more severely impacted by exotic earthworms.

Ben will present the poster (above) at the Connecticut Conference on Natural Resources on March 14, 2016 at UCONN.

Congratulations Ben!