 Good evening. Thank you for coming. I'm John Bauer. I'm a current board member, past president. And I'm going to be your emcee this evening. So thank you all for coming. We've got a couple of housekeeping things. The restrooms are non-gender, and they are by the yellow wall over here. And you'll go in there. Exits right here and on the other end of the building. So just in case. We encourage you to please sign in so that we can add you to our occasional newsletter. Steve's got the clipboard, so we'll be happy to help you out with that. I just want to thank Sun Common for supplying this room and filling my car with free electricity because, you know, brought by the sun. And thank you, Tom, for coming and helping us out with this. Also, thanks to Cold Hollow Cider for the cider and donuts this evening, which are on the back table. Please help yourself because we don't want to take any home. So eat them up. Let's see. We have a pretty good agenda tonight, and hopefully we'll have time for questions. But if not, we have forms scattered around on the tables. If you have a question and we didn't get to it this evening, please fill it in and add your contact information, and somehow we will get that answer to you. Let's see. So we are collecting donations in one of our handy, well, we have these fishing line recycling bins that we scattered around the reservoir. Tito's got one over there. So if you have cash that you want to leave for the Friends of Waterbury Reservoir, feel free to drop it in there. We also have calendars for sale, free stickers and that sort of thing. That's all on the table in the back by the kitchen. So peruse that and have a look. Let's see. What else do I want to talk about? Oh, we are available on the web, Instagram and Facebook, and we would love it if you would follow us there. I'd like to take a moment to introduce our board. Eric Chittenden is our president. Raise your hand, Eric. Thank you very much. Sheila Goss is our vice president over here. Francine Chittenden is our treasurer. She's in the back and ready to take your money. We also have board members Mike Baird. Is Mike here? There he is. Emma is here. Emma Brownlee. Her father, Steve Brownlee, is here. Walt Carpenter, who also works at the day use area. And Tito Keefe from Packinship, who is our new board member. Pretty close? Pack and send. All right. Pack and send. Pack and send. Okay, we got that. So we have an agenda tonight. We'll have Eric will give you some, have some remarks to open things up. We've got Benjamin Green to update us on the dam repair that's coming to a reservoir near you. Francine will offer a brief financial report. Zach Johnson will talk about our greeter program. Sheila Goss will tell us about the loon raft and the fishing line recycling bins. Flooding ranger Ben Fulton is here to talk about his experiences in the last year. And finally, Kristen Sharpless and Alan Thompson will talk about the proposed wildlife corridor, which is near and abuts the reservoir. But before we get going with all of that, Sheila Goss has a brief presentation. I have a brief presentation because... Now you have to come up here. I'm coming up there. All right. Don't start talking until you come up here. And this is a surprise, but I think that John went through the list of those of us who are fortunate enough and honored to serve on the board for this organization to help our mission to preserve this reservoir for all users. But there's one person on the board that I'm constantly amazed at the amount of work that Eric Chittenden puts in. And I'm talking 24-7 year-round. It's unbelievable the amount of work he does and the love he has for the reservoir and also for this organization. So we decided that Eric should be the first to receive the beta version. Of the Friends of Waterbury Reservoir T-Shirt. Eric with pride. There you go, Eric. Thanks for all your hard work. You have to start in the middle of this. I would have said apple soon. Well, Eric, you're next. I'm next. You guys can walk here and talk. I want to start talking John until you come up here. I'm so glad that you followed directions. Well, I too wish you thank you for coming and braving the weather and making it up here. I've got a fair amount of ground to cover tonight, so my comments are going to be pretty brief. As you know, when you're president of an organization like this, a big part of your job is fundraising. That's what we've been busy doing recently. And I do thank John Bauer for standing in and conducting the meeting and seeing it. He's a lot smarter than I am, and he's much more entertaining. But he's also a great clock watcher, so he's going to make sure we're out of here on time. Some of the people we need to thank, the residents of Waterbury and the town of Waterbury, the town actually manages the A&R money that we get. It's a pass-through program, so they put quite a bit of effort into that every year. And the residents of the town, last year we had a little fundraise. Well, it was a signature petition we had, which if you want to get an appropriation from your town, you have to get 5% of the signatures from the voters. So we succeeded in that, and so now we have that coming in every year. So then we have to, of course, thank the residents, because they're the ones really ultimately putting the bill for that. The town of Stowe gives us a $500 appropriation every year. They never asked for signatures or anything. It's been something that they've been doing for several years now. Sheila, do you know how many years they've been doing that? Yeah, quite a while. One of our members, the Leo Bellovo, donated about $300 worth of PVC pipe for the fishline bins. So I need to thank him, and all the volunteers who just show up when we have stuff to do. They come out of the woodwork and it's very heartwarming to see that. And just hours ago, we received a word from Lawson's, Lawson's fight us liquids, got to put the finest in there, she said. And they will support us for the second year in a row with a generous donation of $1,500. So it's a real help. So next time you're enjoying one of those Lawson's finest sip of sun shines, think about them and their generosity. Those of you who work for an organization, especially larger organizations, keep in mind that many of these organizations have matching grants, so you can always ask that question and you get a few of those every year. And it's usually very supportive money for what we're doing. And last but by no means least, the board of directors, we have a very energetic, creative, how can I say, creative and very engaged board of directors. They come out of the woodwork and it makes my work pretty easy. So everybody here should know that they've got a voice on the res, and you should use it. So I want to need to mention the kiosks that were put in. We had recommendations from a lot of users that they wanted to see more information at the res. So we mentioned that to the Forest and Parks service that time. It was another team, but within two seasons, I think there were nine of them were on the reservoir now. And the Blush Hill Parking, we gave a presentation to the Rotary Club and a lot of the Rotary Club folks live up on Blush Hill because they like to golf, I think. So anyway, it was getting pretty much used up there and a lot of traffic. So we made that mention to the state and this year they put in a little parking lot. It's only seven or nine, how many Francinas? Yeah, but it'll take some of the pressure off the use of the highway. And they also paved it last year, so that was a huge improvement. So that's all I've got to say and John, it's yours again. Thank you, Eric. Alright, next we have Benjamin Green. He's going to tell us all about the updating of the dam that is coming to a Res 4 near us. If you'd like to stand over here, Benjamin, and when you want to advance the slide, just hit the space box button. If you need to go back, just use the back panel. Thank you very much. My name is Ben Green. I'm a dam safety engineer at the Department of Environmental Conservation Dam Safety Program. I'm one of the caretakers of Waterbury Dam. Very much thank you for the opportunity to present on the ongoing project at the dam today. I kind of imagine that pretty much everyone at this meeting is probably intimately familiar with the reservoir and probably aren't familiar with the dam as well, but just to sort of set the stage for the talk here. I'm going to do a brief overview. Some of the main statistics on the dam are listed there on the right. The dam is a Depression-era constructed Army Corps of Engineer Design, Civilian Conservation Corps constructed dam that was handed over to the state and is owned and operated by the state. It's one of the more formidable dams in the state, one of the largest ones, certainly the largest ones in the state's portfolio. This is, I guess, I hope you can see this pretty well. This is an ortho image of the dam from Google Earth. There's the main components of the embankment, the gate house, and the pipe that conveys water from the spillway down to the Little River under most conditions, and then our spillway system, which is really the subject of our project. And this zoomed photograph shows the two main components of the spillway, the gated section and the ungated section. The gated section is the main flood control element at the dam. The flood control band at the reservoir is roughly from the water level. You can see in this photograph to the top of the ungated section. So just to give a little more project background, we're actually maintaining a website that tracks this project. It's admittedly a little bit out of date and the process is being updated right now, but it's a good resource for information on where the project is. This project originally came about in the early 2000s during test operations at the gate. They jammed during test operations and it was determined that deteriorating concrete and expanding concrete were the reason for that. And at that time, roughly like a 15-year design life when that repair was assigned. So we're kind of past that now. Also at that same time, they performed some structural analysis on the gates and determined that the gates can't be safely operated under a major flood event. And so at that time, a flood load restriction was placed on the gates. So we actually cannot hold a complete flood pool, which would be holding water at the top of the gates, essentially. We have to actually stop flood control prior to that with the current deficiencies with the gates. Another element that came into play was Green Mountain Power when they re-licensed their facility through FERC, a new water quality certificate came out of that. And amongst other environmental requirements was one to do away with the historic winter drawdown at the reservoir. And that was perhaps a nice goal, but something that can't be achieved with the condition of the current spillway. So through some federal legislation, the state has teamed with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and we're doing a 35% state match, 65% federal match project. And it's roughly estimated to be a $60 million project to assess and repair the spillway. So the main project goals are pretty straightforward. Number one is to restore full flood capability to the dam, continue to support historic uses, hydropower and recreation, and ultimately the end to seasonal drawdowns, which hopefully will improve water quality. And from my standpoint as well, it's going to certainly improve our operation to maintain it to the dam and the public safety associated with the dam. These are kind of two neat photographs of similar location, one from 1959 when that was about the time that the third radial arm retainer gate was added to the dam. Prior to that, there was just the two and these two are 20 feet wide, this one's 35, and again this was added in the late 50s and this is what it looks like today. So the project steps, by all said and done, we'll be at this for about 10 years before we're done. We've already been at it for a little while. Working with through the core assessment and design process is not fast, but it is thorough. So the first step in the process was to do what's called a risk assessment. It was called a semi-quantitative risk assessment and that was completed in 2021. Basically that helped us to confirm that we were focusing on the right project by going after the spillway modifications and spillway improvements. The next step that we moved to that we're currently in is called the dam safety modification study. Basically we're working off the previous work and doing additional study and analyses and collection of field data to further support potential improvements to the dam. Hopefully we'll be done this step spring 2024 and then move into design. Final design is roughly estimated to look by the core to be a two-year process. So if that brings us to about 2024 to about 2026 and construction to follow, which is estimated to, we're not exactly sure how long it's going to take yet because we don't know exactly what we're doing, but probably at least a two-year process. So construction, actual physical change out of the reservoir is still a good little ways away, but we are working through it. We sort of started at 50,000 feet. We've zoomed in a little bit to 40,000. Maybe we're like at 35,000 feet right now and eventually we'll have really good optics on exactly where we're going with this project how to most effectively and efficiently spend the money and buy down risk for the project. So just to go over a little bit of the completed work that's been done. As I mentioned earlier, the first step was a semi-quantitative risk assessment. I presented on this in past presentations, so I won't go into a lot of detail of what we did here, but basically the outcome was we identified potential failure modes of the dam. What are the fragilities? It was done holistically. We're not looking at just the spillway, but we looked at the dam in its entirety. We have $60 million. We want to make sure that we're spending that most effectively to buy down risk. And while we're certainly aware of the deficiencies of the spillway, are those actually the most critical items to take care of? So that was ultimately the first step. And so ultimately, we initially identified, I think, roughly 50 PFMs or potential failure modes. And then through analysis, those got trimmed down to five critical ones which are listed here. And sort of the two that rose to the top were the spillway stability and taintergate failure. Provincial failure modes, which are spillway related, that were sort of validated the project that we're set out to do. The next step was to move to a quantitative risk assessment, which is basically building on the semi-quantitative risk assessment and really focusing on just those two spillway failure modes. There's been a lot of structural analysis for sliding and overtopping stability of the elements of the spillway. And also, the other failure modes associated with taintergate failure. The way that taintergate works, as many of you are probably familiar, they're like a big door and they swing down when they're closed and we pull them up when they're open. There's cables that are connected. It says, not in water, but don't worry, that didn't happen. They're connected to the leading edge of the gate. So they're pretty efficient and they can be lifted with a relatively small amount of energy and they can store a lot of water. But one of the historic deficiencies with this type of gate is the hinge or the trunnion, like this isn't a very good picture of it, but the trunnion or the hinge that the gates swing on, when these were designed, the design guidance for many years did not have you include the friction that builds up in that pin. And this is an example of a dam that failed Folsom Dam in California in 1995 that was determined to fail because of the friction built up in the trunnion. And as I mentioned earlier, the analysis done at Waterbury Dam indicates that we're also susceptible to a similar style of failure. The trunnion friction has kind of been a big subject of this, of our work. Then are all three tanzer gates at the same sort of condition and all need to be reworked? Yeah, when the initial analysis was done, I think they came up with slightly different elevations where those may run into issues. And we're actually, I'll talk about in a minute, but we've actually been studying the trunnion friction and I don't have the results yet. We just took the data last month, but we analyzed each gate and each trunnion to determine where they stand. The fieldwork that just was completed last month, the first part of it was concrete in bedrock testing and cores. A multitude of it were drilled throughout the dam in both spillways and all three spillways in the ungated spillway section in the spillway bridge. They were collected and they're going to be analyzed. And we don't have the results back yet, but that work was successfully completed. The other part of the work that just finished up was the trunnion friction testing. This was a pretty neat analysis that was done through rope access, a company called Bridge Dynamics visited our site and they installed string gauges on the strut arms of each of the gates. And then they monitored that instrumentation. We ran the gate through a multitude of heights and variants. And from that we've given all the results back yet, but from that they're able to calculate very accurately what the trunnion friction is in those joints. And so that will help us to really understand how much of a problem trunnion friction is or isn't in our site here. And like I said, we don't have the results yet, but that was pretty compelling work and hopefully we'll find out there. They're really not as bad as me with that original Army Corps assessment evaluated it to be. So we're sort of heading towards design, but we're not there yet. There's a lot of discussion of different sort of rehabilitation alternatives that could potentially be implemented here to address the issues with the dam. And this is sort of a cartoonish sketch of some of the kind of the leading ones I would say. The Army Corps might scoff a little bit of me making this much conclusion, but we talk a lot about it and this is sort of kind of where we're heading and we've been talking about these things for a while. So we're getting relative confidence that the project's probably going to include a good number of these items. For starters, replace the degraded concrete. The entirety surface of that concrete all throughout the structure is probably going to be replaced. That's probably going to require chipping down one to two feet into removing the deteriorated concrete, tying in dowels and reinforcing steel and then recasting new concrete to original surface. A second item that will most likely be undertaken or something of similar is the install post tension anchors. One of the things that's kind of come out in a lot of the stability analyses is that the original spillway system is not tied to bedrock in any way and it has fairly marginal factors of safety against instability when you compare it to like modern standards. And so a way to improve upon that is to anchor the concrete to bedrock below. Again, those red dots are just sort of meant to show kind of a rough idea of where or where not they may end up. Another element that's going to be included is rehabilitating the gates themselves. I'm thinking that most likely at this point we're not going to be replacing the gates. We're going to be rehabilitating the existing ones. That's probably going to require removing the gates from the trunnions, adding a bunch of structural members to the strut arms, reinforcing them, sandblasting them, recoding them and reinstalling them. And then also along with that will be a demolition of the existing access bridge, a construction of a new stronger bridge that can handle the lifting loads better than the existing one as well as new lifting equipment and operating equipment. And then I think kind of the other item that's really kind of come out from these risk assessment work is that the bedrock quality at the site is subpar and the spillway has never really experienced tremendously high flows and yet we have pretty good evidence of a fairly high amount of erosion that's happened. In order to arrest that or prevent that from causing, eroding further and causing potential stability issues with the overall structure, some sort of a concrete apron is likely to be incorporated into the project. So in summary, we're currently in the study phase and we're moving to design. Hopefully by spring 2024 we're moving slow. You guys aren't missing much yet. There will be lots of future opportunities for public education and public input. Right now a lot of what I'm showing you is kind of like this is where I think we're going. We don't really have a lot of hard things to show yet. And that's why there hasn't been a lot. But there will be more as we start to really zero in on the project. Construction is not going to be as anticipated till 2026 to 2028 timeframe. So we're still some years away from what's going to happen there. One item, two items that I just wanted to talk about, I guess I brushed over when I was talking about this slide was two of the challenges just starting to unravel, I guess, and start to figure out our one is how we're going to access the site with the adequate construction equipment to perform the work. And the second is how are we going to manage water levels and how are we going to manage flood protection requirements during the work? And I don't have answers for either of those questions and I know that's probably two that are most germane to this group. But those are just items that are just sort of starting to be discussed now. And so those will be largely impactful to the public. Both upstream and downstream. And like I said, we're just kind of starting to scratch the surface of those issues. So with that, thank you very much for the opportunity to present. Imagine there's time for questions. Yeah, we can take a couple of short questions if there aren't any. We're going to start draining. Start draining? Yeah. It's not clear yet. I don't know. If we are and if we do how much we will, it's hard to say right now. I think one of the leading ideas is that some drawdown is going to be necessary because we're going to probably need to remove the gates during the work until there's going to be no ability to provide flood protection downstream. So in order to do that, we're going to need to provide flood protection in reservoir. But that's still not finalized. Based on the 2026 construction time. Am I following you right? If you did need to drawdown, do that work? It wouldn't be until 2026? It'd be in that time frame. Yeah, it'd still be a long ways away. And there's still these concepts I showed you are very conceptual. And so there's a lot of things that can happen. There's a lot of talk about try to do one gate at a time and try to do less of a drawdown and shift flows. And it adds costs and risks that need to be kind of evaluated with every one of those options. But we're not really very far down that road. Good question. I can't, I don't know the dates, but 15, 20 years ago there was a major repair to the dam. Now we're going to have another major repair. Not that I fully understand that for safety and a lot of reasons it's necessary. But it does have an economic impact on this community. Are we going to expect every 20 years there's going to be major reduce of the dam? Or is this kind of, hey? I certainly hope not. I think the, you know, I think one thing that's sort of the... Well, we draw it 15, 20 years ago. The risk assessment process, the real value of doing that first in the project. If that had been done prior to that project that was done 15 or 20 years ago, that project might not have been the one that got done at that point. It may have been this one. So that was not really standard practice at that time. But I think, you know, we have... It kind of gave us a great idea of the expanse of what really our fragilities are at the dam and what we need to focus on. And we've addressed the seepage issue and now we're addressing the spillway. And hopefully the dam will continue to perform adequately into the future and sort of taking care of the main issues for a sizable period of time. Thank you, Ben. Appreciate it. Do you have any more questions for Ben? We'll get them to them and then we'll get some answers to you. All right. Coming up next we have Francine with a financial report. So once a year I like to report to the community about our finances. I think it's important for people to know what we're doing and how we're using the monies that people are giving us. And I would say that we're ending this year in what would be a good financial position. And we do have some reserves entering next year, which is exciting for us. A lot of years we haven't had that. Right now I believe we have a little bit under $5,000 of reserve going into 2023. So far to date this year we've received $2,014.10 in direct public support and that's people just giving us money out of the kindness of their heart and also really understanding the importance of what we do. We also do have an agency of natural resources grant, the one that Eric talked about that's a pass-through grant that's managed by the town of Waterbury. And they are, we are expecting to receive that grant money. It's basically based on our performance. So we've finished all the paperwork, submitted all of our reports and we will have an extra $3,400 hopefully coming from them that we'll go into next year. Again, we have received the $500 from the town of Stowe. We have another $1,000 coming from the town of Waterbury. So in reality, you know, we're in pretty good shape. We have uptilt through today between grants and public support and appropriations we've had about, well, I can give you the exact amount. $3,656.10 with the additional $4,408 coming in the next month or so. Our operating expenses are pretty modest and I will tell you that they're modest because we have a very engaged working board. So the board of directors does not get paid, but they're incredibly valuable to what we are able to accomplish and because of that we're able to do a lot with very little money. We have the one program that is fairly expensive for us based on just the size of our organization is the Aquatic Invasive Species Program that the Agency of Natural Resources does give us a grant for. It doesn't pay for the whole program. It pays about right now about 50%. There is talk that they're going to be lowering the amount that they're going to have available for different towns to ask for this grant. We're not quite sure where it will be. There's a lot of changes happening there. So keep informed. I've heard it's going to be a drop of close to 30% of available funds. And this is a statewide program. So we're all taking from the same pot of money quite honestly. So we'll see what happens. That is why we're doing maybe a little more fundraising this year because we feel it's an important program to continue. Aquatic Invasive Species have been a problem in a lot of lakes in Vermont. We've seen millfoil and other invasives really pretty much create dead lakes. We're trying to avoid that happening here. Whether, if nothing else, maybe we can slow it down. We do have an invasive in the lake. It's called brittle niad. It's been there since the last drawdown in the early 20s. And it seems to have a cycle where it gets really thick. End of summer, hot water. It blooms mostly at the Cotton Brook end of the reservoir where canoes come in. It's very shallow there. So, but a lot of what we're doing is not only preventing invasives coming into the lake. We're also hoping to prevent brittle niad going out of the lake to another lake around us. We have other, so if you want actual numbers, this year the total cost of running this program, the Aquatic Invasive Species Program, $6,331.44. We also have done a few other things with the monies that we've raised. We were able to, last year we were able to raise a lot of money. We had a lot of really great support from various people and organizations. And so we were able to donate some money to Vermont Forest Parks and Recreation. They're out on the lake. They don't always have the monies for their tools. So we were able to buy them some battery operated tools, which was really exciting. And I know that they appreciated it and were able to do a lot more of their repairs using that kind of equipment that's not always available through the state funds. So that was about $287. We were able to donate. And then really the rest of our costs are mostly office supplies, some printing. We were using Zoom a lot, so we had to buy a Zoom account. Just very general liability insurance. So the entire extra cost is a little over $1,221.23. So anyway, so far this year we've spent in actual cash, not in kind, $7,840.61. So I want to just add we're really proud of being stewards of all of these funds that are donated to us. And as well as the partnering that we've had to do, we do, and we do gladly with the state agencies that are involved with this project, with this dam, and with the beautiful reservoir. We have a very passionate and just a great group of board members and volunteers and they're willing to roll up their sleeves and go to work. And we couldn't do it without them. You know, if you, again, a lot of what we do is we do have to ask for money. That's the bottom line. But we are also really, really happy with the support that we're getting from our local community and not just Waterbury, Stowe, all of the community that uses this lake. It's just a phenomenal group of people. I will say one last thing, you know, if any of you are interested in joining our board or becoming volunteers, just please let us know. And, you know, we've got a full board right now. We need nine people to run and we have nine people, but people come and go. And if you have any interest in joining us, let us know. We'd like to at least have your name in a bucket and call you. And certainly volunteers, we can't do it without you. Anyone who has any questions, you know, and I can show you very open. Our books are very open for anybody to inspect. Just call me. I said we do a lot with very little money, quite honestly. That's it. Any questions for Francine? Okay. Thank you very much. Proving that it takes a village to take care of a reservoir. Let's see. I think coming up next is our Greeter Supreme. Zach Johnston. The floor is yours. Sounds good. So, yeah, my name is Zach Johnston. I'm one of the Greeters on the reservoir. This year we had several, which was awesome, which I'll get into in a bit. We've been doing this program since 2016. So, you might ask, what's an aquatic species and why do we need to look out for them? So, an aquatic species is any non-native species whose introduction can do harm to the environment that it's in. So, aquatic species, they can transfer a lot of different ways, mostly through people. The big thing that we do is educating people on how they can help prevent what we like to call hitchhikers, because most of the time the species will attach, like in between a trailer is the most common area. And one reason why we don't want invasive species in our body of water is because they can just totally take over and change the ecology of the entire reservoir. Here's our crew we had this year, and once again we had really great fundraising, which is why I think in the past the most Greeters we've had is two. This year we were able to cover so much ground because of the Greeters we had. We were able to have Greeters every weekend at both the Plush Hill Boat Launch and the Dam Boat Launch. In the past we would pretty much rotate back and forth. So it was really nice to be able to interact with everyone at the two busiest boat launches at the State Park. And also we were able this year to have some Greeters on during the week, which is really awesome, because it's definitely different demographics who use the reservoir during the week versus during the weekend. So obviously the weekend is when there's the most people, but it's really important to get in touch with everyone. So yeah, a little bit about the program. The state started in 2002. Like I said, we started it in 2016 was our first year. There's over 30 access programs in the state. What do we do with Greeters? When builders come, we welcome them. And we give a little bit of a background of who we are and why we do the work we do. And we offer complimentary inspections, which pretty much looks like what's going on here. However, I've never seen a boat with this many invasives. That would be a real issue. But once again, the most common places where invasives get stuck is in between the trailer and the boat itself. And yeah, so if we do find species, we identify them and just let the state know. We also collect data on the usage and how many people have an understanding of invasives coming into it. And that number increases every year. Now I would say almost everyone we talk to at least has some idea of what invasive species are or why we don't want them to spread, which is really awesome. And we also distribute educational materials. So as Francine was saying, Braille and Iad is our one invasive. And we've had it since the last drawdown and as long as I've been involved. And Braille and Iad really likes reservoirs because of the fluctuation in the water. And this is, I can't really see it too, too well, but there's a bunch of it here. I believe that's around the dam boat launch. And that's kind of what it looks like in your hand. So the reason why it's called Braille and Iad is because it breaks apart really easily. And it only takes like little segments to spread to new areas. And when I first came about, it was definitely like in a couple of covey areas, but I think every summer it's definitely you see it in new areas. And I remember Chad actually had a map and it was kind of amazing to see how much it had spread over the years. Here's some other invasives that we've had intersections with over the years. So Braille and Iad, obviously, and we do, especially in August, we like to check the boats as they leave. Just to let people know that not only can you bring invasives into the reservoir, but you can definitely bring them out. And because the Iad does seem to hang around the launch areas, I think that's super important. We have had interceptions of Uri's milk oil, just people coming in, never establishing the reservoir. Same thing with curly leaf pondweed. The other thing that we sometimes get is people who have water and the reason why we are concerned with water coming from different ponds or lakes is because in that water, it can contain invasives. The big one is zebra mussels. Their offspring is so small that you can't see them with your bare eye, which is why there is a state law not to transfer water. That's why, because there can be thousands of zebra mussels in not much of water. One thing that I was excited about this year was the path at the dam that connects to the overflow parking. Because if you're familiar with that area, it's a bit of a walk to get to that overflow section, and it's windy and kind of narrow. So this path allowed people to kind of cut through the field and not have to deal with all the cars going through. So the little things that make your day. Yeah, that's more or less what I have. I don't know if we have time for questions, but if we do. Does anybody have a question for Zach? Do you see any difference between in-staters and out-of-staters as to education on invasives? Good question. I would say the overwhelming amount of people who we have are local. I would say better than 90%. I would say there's definitely a little bit of a drop-off. Yeah, a lot of our traffic is actually local, which is really cool. So there's a bit of a drop-off, but surprisingly, I think a lot of different states have done really well. Maine has a really good program. Yeah, so I think there's a little bit of a drop-off, but also the data is actually pretty small because so many of the people are actually local. Like 4th of July weekend is when you definitely see more. And those holiday weekends, I would say you get a bigger percentage of people who don't know as much about it because they might just be out for the holiday and they might not be someone who's out all the time. So I would say that's where the biggest drop-off is, is the big holiday weekends. Do you think it's a lot of the out-of-staters are over by the campgrounds and they're putting in that asset where you guys should never have it? Yeah, I want one at Lowell River. Or yeah, I'm not sure because we don't really have any numbers, but that's a super good question. One question, you talked about boats transporting water. I'm assuming you were talking bigger motorboats. Is it the weight boats that, I mean, maybe a little ignorant who transports water? Yeah, so it's all different kinds of motorboats. There's both the live walls that carry the fish, like that's a threat, but also the water from the drain plugs. That's why it is a state law to have your drain plug out when you travel. And that's why actually one of the big things we do is remind people to put their drain plugs back in before they go into the reservoir. Because I've definitely seen it a few times where people haven't and I feel like I would probably make that mistake too. Oh, I've seen it, I've seen it too. Hey, Sik, weren't you there, weren't you, did you start doing this program in 2016? I did, yeah. It's the original creator. Thanks so much, Brett. I really appreciate your help with this program. He now supervises it. And yeah, wow, increasing success. All right, Sheila is next. There's your black screen and you have a spacebar when you're ready. Spacebar is the big one. Yes, I know. Well, I'm not an Apple Mac person. Okay, so I'm just briefly going to talk about some of our wildlife endeavors and our wildlife protection projects that we've done. The first is about our loons. And I think it was 2019. I was absolutely incredulous to see loons nesting on watery reservoir at the northern end. They'd never nested before, at least not that was documented. The reason loons can't have trouble nesting on reservoirs for the fluctuating water levels, their nests get flooded. And they need, because they can't walk on land because of their anatomical structure, they have to nest near the water. So we had never seen them. I was out paddling one day and holy crap, I got a video of the loons on the nest. I came home. I got in touch with Eric Hansen at the Vermont Center for Eco Studies. He's like, no way. I say, Eric, here's the proof. So unfortunately, that nest was flooded by one of our common high water rain events. However, and that was in June, in August of that year, Eric Hansen came out in Francine, and Eric and I, we went out with Eric Hansen from the Vermont Center for Eco Studies and we built a loon raft. The idea on the loon rafts is where there's an area of fluctuating water, the loon raft, because loons like islands, because it protects them from predators and they're not too far from the water's edge. The raft will fluctuate with the water level and they've been very successful at many other lakes in Vermont. So we built this thing, which is quite an endeavor, if you've never built a loon raft before. And unfortunately, the loons have yet to nest in it. There is a pair of loons. They hang around. I caught the mating last summer. But for some reason, they don't like the invitation to our beautiful, well-foliated loon raft. So with the help of rain, the ranges, the floating ranges, we can't do it without Ben and Chad and his folks. And Eric and Francine, we go out and Mike Bard, we're out in the muck and the mud, the low water every spring to get that in position, get the new foliage all put up, make it nice and inviting for the loons. I've got videos and pictures of them swimming right around the raft, but they've yet to nest on it. And this pair, they may be young, they may be inexperienced, they may not be a great couple as it were. We don't know, but we will set it up next year. And we will hope again that if they don't nest there, it's in an area that has the kind of environment that the loons like. And we're hoping, every year we hope, maybe this will be the year that they actually nest again and even if they don't actually hatch chicks, it would be a step to have them establish a nest and then a next step would be for them to lay an egg or two and then hopefully we get some chicks out of it. So that's an ongoing effort every year. Our other big program that we started last year was in response to an incident. And two or three years ago, Ranger Chad, most of you were on the reservoir a lot in the last few years, know Chad Amal, had to rescue a cormorant that was entangled in fishing line. Now, I don't know anyone that's a big fan of cormorants, other than they pose really nicely for photographs. They're really great for posing for photos. But even a poor cormorant doesn't deserve to starve to death with fishing line entangled around its beak. So Chad rescued it, whatever, and saved it, unraveled it, and the bird went free. It had a little nick in its beak, but it was fine. Well, I had been aware of other programs throughout the northeast to help prevent this kind of occurrence happening because cormorants, we also have loons. We have eagles. We have herons. We have green herons. We have black-brown night herons. We have mammals, the minks and the otters that hang around on the shoreline that are endangered by fishing line that's left along shorelines in snags in the water. So one of the programs that U.S. boating and other conservation groups have put together is a fishing line recycling bin program. The idea is you have a bin at accesses where people go and the monofilament fishing line, instead of people just throwing it on the ground or throwing it in the water or even taking it to a landfill because it can be dangerous to birds in landfills, the idea is you take your fishing line recycling bin and throw it in here. And then we as volunteers collect it and Dick's Sporting Goods and other places will recycle it so that it doesn't go back into the wild. It doesn't go to landfills where it can endanger other birds as well. So we got approval from the state summer before this past summer to install three. And I will admit I was a little dubious because Connecticut said, oh my gosh, it will be filled with diapers, beer cans, poop bags, everything you could imagine. I said, well, let's give it a try, we won't know. Well, the state gave us approval for three and if you ever see, if you look on our website under projects, there was a report I did last year on our Lune project and it has pictures. If you've been to the Adirondacks or you've been to New Hampshire, you may have seen other such bins. They're usually just white PVC with an elbow at the top. They're real boring, they're real industrial looking. And the state said, oh no, you can't do that. They have to be dark green, they have to be brown, they have to fit in. So Eric Chittin took the design and ran with it and developed, this is our design. This is classic. We have the best design fishing line recycling bins in the country. And we have not had them vandalized. We have had very little trash and people are using them. This year we added a fourth bin at the dam access area. I monitor the Cottonbrook bin, for example, and of the times that I check it at least once a week and 50% of the time I checked it, there was fishing line in it. And the only trash I found all season was one cigarette butt. And yes, we're also finding lures, bobbers, sinkers, leaders, but you know what, that's okay. Because I'd rather have them go in here than be left along the side of the shoreline where a heron or some other bird will pick up the lure thinking it's a real frog and ingester. So that's our fishing bin program. Next summer we will be in five spots on the reservoir. We also have been working with the Vermont Center for Eco Studies. They wanted a copy of our plans, a copy of our project. The state has gotten copies of our plans because the Loon Conservation Project with Eric Hansen is also interested in getting such recycling bins set around the state because of the issues that they've had to recover from the lunes that have been entangled in fishing line. So we've done really well. We keep our fingers crossed every year when we set them up that it's going to be a good year. We've had two really successful years and next year will be our third. And that actually leads to a reason that we're kind of expanding next year. This is a young second-year eagle, bald eagle, hangs out at Cottonbrook a lot. Or I should say, used to hang out at Cottonbrook. These pictures I took of him in June and July. In October he was dead. Despite the hard, tough efforts of our rangers and Chad Amal and our game ward, I think it was Chad Barrett, was it? Chad Barrett. The poor eagle was grounded. I was contacted by the Ryan Institute of Natural Sciences to transport the bird because I'm a transporter for vins. I ended up not transporting it because the rangers got permission to transport it. He was grounded, staggering in bad shape. This was in the middle of October. And it was determined that he had 13 times the lethal load of lead in his blood. 100 milliliters per deciliter or whatever blood is considered a lethal load and he had 1,300 of lead in his system and he had a lead sinker in his gut. He had a lead sinker that was completely corroded, deteriorated and had killed this bird. So that's an eagle that we will not see at Cottonbrook anymore. I've been watching this bird for two years. I used to call it Eli. And possibly his parents, an adult and a sub-adult eagle are still around, but I worry about them. I worry about them because I've seen the eagles, they fight over a fish. So if poor Eli ate a fish that had lead sinker in it or he found a lead sinker and they're sharing food, if carrion, a dead deer, if a deer is shot with lead or a bird is shot with lead shot and the eagles are feasting on the carrion, they share that carrion. So what we're going to do next year, Vermont Center for Eco Studies got a federal grant out of some money that the state got for putting up with something. I'm not sure what it was. But the Vermont Center for Eco Studies is also adding to their Loone Protection Program, adding a lead buyback program. And they kind of started it last year and have already been in touch with Eric Hansen and LoE's assistant, I don't know if you know LoE's, is also working on the lead program. So we're going to be coordinating with them and what we'll probably be doing next year is we'll be adding informational signs to folks, making people aware of how they can become part of the lead buyback program. And hopefully this will be the last eagle, the last loon that we lose on the reservoir. Thanks Sheila, appreciate it. If you have any questions for Sheila, go ahead and grab her elbow. We're going to step right along because we have a report from our floating ranger, Ben Fulton, is it? Fulton. Fulton. Oh, very good. All right, typo there. Okay, sorry. Let's see, is that yours? Yep. Hey, what do you know? All right, I'm Ben Fulton. I am the Floating Ranger slash Park Manager for Water Bay Reservoir and its remote campsites. I'm going to keep it pretty short. This year we saw a pretty big change in our staffing. A long time ranger, Chad Amel, was promoted to Regional Operations Manager for Vermont State Parks. And I took over his position, along with two newcomers, Cody Smith and Phillip Dudley, who are both new to parks this year. Now for the most part, people have been returning to their post-pandemic lifestyle and as a result, both camping and day use have returned to a much more manageable level than it's been for the last few years. With the exception of, you know, pretty busy summer weekends, the end holidays, the recreation at the reservoir has become a much more calm experience and visitor feedback that we've received this year reflects that. Combined with Water Bay Reservoir remote camping, Little River camping and day use and Water Bay Center State Park day use, we've had over 94,000 recorded visitors. And this does not include the unrecorded visitors who come in from the Dam Boat Launch or Blush Hill Boat Launch or Moscow Boat Launch. So, yeah, potentially thousands more than the number we have. With the new reservation system, we found that the quality of our campers has improved. People who plan ahead tend to be better campers in our experience. And as a result, there have been way fewer incidents of damaged plant life, vandalism, illegal campers in undesignated areas and undesignated fires. All of these types of incidents are at a low right now and that's great. It makes camping a much better experience for all of us and it keeps the reservoir looking good. So with the reduction of incidents this year, we've had more time to complete some much needed projects. We have completed a new day use area just south of site one in a nice little rock grotto type of area. And we've installed metal firings at all the remaining sites that hadn't had them yet. So all the sites now have metal firings with metal grills except for the few day use areas that are in flood areas. We already heard a little bit about our invasive brittle niad, but here's a map that we made of our invasives. We do this every year and it seems that the spread of brittle niad is slowing somewhat. It takes over mostly the shallow areas of the war, mostly up north there you'll see in red. We also tracked Japanese knotweed which continues to come down from the Moscow boat launch. It kind of floats down the river there toward the dam. And then new this year we found two young black locust saplings on the Cottonbrook Delta. I spoke with one of the state foresters and she didn't seem too concerned about it as long as we hack it down and be on top of it every time it tries to grow back. It should be overtaken by the surrounding plants and not be an issue to us. Right, so clean water. We have two indicators here that we've had really clean water as usual on the reservoir. The first is a quite large crayfish, the biggest one I've ever seen, really massive. It was actually found in one of the anchors for the loon nest that friends of Water Bearers were help us put out, that we helped them put out. And then the other is this weird blob looking thing on the right, it's called a bryozoan. It's a colony of single celled organisms. This one's about a foot in diameter attached to one of our ropes for a buoy and they can get up to two feet and they're an indicator of extremely clean water so I was pretty happy to see that. I saw a couple last year too. Future projects, new day use area on the peninsula south of site 27. This is the peninsula that marks the no wake zone for the northern section of the reservoir. There's a nice flat area with a rock outcropping in a small beach that I think will be great for day use. People already use it as a day use area. We also want to repair the stairs at site 15, which got destroyed by a falling tree. And yeah, that's going to be one of our early projects next year. We're also planning on putting picnic tables at all the day use sites that are not in flood areas. Hopefully this will get people to use the day use sites for day use instead of campsites, which are usually reserved. And then we also really want to replace our aging no wake buoys. If you've been out there you've seen some of the lettering and the symbols are starting to come off of them. Some of them don't float quite so great. So we're looking into that, but we don't yet have funding for it. And then finally I want to thank the Friends of Waterbury Reservoir for their generous donation of power tools. They're really helpful this year for repairs from outhouse doors to repairs on our boat. And also the great work they do with the Loon Nest and the fishing line collection and the Greeter program. So yeah, if anyone has any questions. Is that 94,000 this year or with that? This year. Close to 95,000. Is that a record? I don't know that much. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. All right, and finally Kristin Sharpless and Alan Thompson are here. I hope. Because they're up next. And they're going to talk about the Shootsville Hill Wildlife Corridor. Then here they come. And folks, I do apologize. We are running late. Thank you for your patience and for hanging with us. What time is it? Quarter of eight or so. Okay, are you trying to wrap up at eight? Well, we were. All right, I'll make it snappy. Okay. Well, good evening. Oh, we have to late third. Oh, extra time. All right. Okay. Well, I'm Kristin Sharpless. I serve as the executive director at Stowland Trust, and I'm pleased to be here this evening with you. Thanks for inviting me. And I'm representing the Shootsville Hill Wildlife Corridor Partnership. So I want to acknowledge Alan Thompson with the Waterbury Lands Initiative is also here. And Billy was just here. He just stepped out. And Billy Victor is with the Waterbury Conservation Commission. So both partners, along with others in helping to keep this internationally important corridor open and safe for wildlife. And it's a great tie-in to the work that you do with the reservoir, because the reservoir is in the corridor, as we'll see in the map. I don't know if you're already aware of it or not, but it's a pretty cool feature right here in Waterbury and Stow. So I'm going to share a little bit about what the corridor is, why it's important, why it's threatened, and some of the conservation efforts that are underway to help protect it within this landscape. So just briefly, Stowland Trust, if you're not familiar with who we are and what we do, we're a local land conservation organization based in Stow, and we serve the greater community. And in addition to partnering with others on projects like this to protect important habitat, we've been, for 35 years, also protecting important farm and other forest lands in and around Stow with a focus on recreation and public access and community spaces. And connecting people to the land. So it's kind of interesting to think about the wildlife corridor, as we'll see when we look at it, is home and habitat to many of us, potentially some of you. There's a lot of people who live in it, who travel through it, who have businesses in it. It's a pretty inhabited space with humans and also really critical for wildlife, so a really shared space for people and wildlife. And what we need out of the corridor and how we use it and how wildlife use it aren't always, you know, supportive of each other. There's a tension there, so it's an interesting space to be working in and connecting to. So just for some context, in terms of kind of showing you why this corridor stands out, in a really big picture view, this is the whole northern Appalachian, Acadian region, as we call it, essentially the northern forest. So outlined in blue there. And Vermont is right here. And this is showing really important in the colored blobs these linkages. So when we think about terrestrial animals, moose, bear critters that have pretty wide ranges, travel long distances, how they move through landscapes over seasons or generations, they really need an intact, connected landscape, largely a forest. And that can include wetlands and waterways in places like the Waterbury Reservoir, but it's really dominated and embedded by forest and embedded in forest. And it's pretty extensive forested region, but it's got a lot of people in it, a lot of developed areas. And so when we think about what it is that allows animals to move through this really large landscape, it's really often the connections between other large areas that are really critical. And on a very large scale, these blobs are really important connecting forest linkages. So right here, we call this the Northern Green Mountains, this includes Mansfield, and we're right in it. And then right next door is the Worcester to the Northeast Kingdom linkage. So two really internationally important large blocks of forest that are connecting as animals move across the landscape, both north to south and kind of east to west between the Adirondacks and moving up into Maine, thinking about down into Massachusetts and moving up into Canada. And they intersect and cross really right here, or just north of here, in the Shrewsville Hill Wildlife Corridor. So right there is us. As we zoom in, this is the kind of the outline of the Wildlife Corridor with the Worcester Range here and the Green Mountains here. This is the Still Waterbury town line. This is about a 10,000 acre area that defines what, when you, it's a big area, but when you zoom way out, it's really just a tiny little piece of forest or intact, relatively intact habitat. And really the only place between Waterbury and Stowe where you have that connection still there for wildlife to move through. So why is it important? Why does it matter? I mentioned already that right animals move across landscapes for all kinds of reasons. We've heard some great information about aquatic animals, about avian species who move either through the air or swim, but for land animals who are traveling over terrestrial environments, spaces like this can be really critical for seasonal migrations, getting from between winter and summer habitats or movement in response to climate change where they're moving out of an area where it's no longer suitable, seeking more suitable habitat as young and dispersed, looking for their own territories or for mates. There's a lot of reasons why animals are moving at different times of year or different times during their lifespan. And so there's a real need for them to be able to navigate through landscapes relatively safely. I suppose there's nothing really safe about being a wild animal but through appropriate habitat. And the big barrier in the Shootsville Hill Wildlife Corridor, the biggest one, is Route 100. So, busy state highway just looking back here, it's right here. We're all probably very familiar with it. I drove on it today and actually swerved around a deer that had been killed trying to cross the road. So for us, it's a connector. It's how we get from one point to another. Navigate through the landscape for wildlife. It's a barrier by and large and a pretty significant one. Not just in terms of the fact that there's vehicles traveling fast, but there's the volume and the patterns of traffic make it pretty hard to cross. I don't know how many of you tried crossing Route 100 on foot, but it's scary. Alan and I were doing some surveys on the ground and it was not comfortable being on Route 100 trying to navigate. Like, could we dart across the road? No, probably not a good idea. So, it's easy to imagine that for other critters, it's a challenging prospect to get across there. And I also just want to point out on this map, if you're wondering where Shoots, maybe some of you already knew this, I did not before I started working on this project, but if you're wondering where the Shootsville Hill term comes from, the name, the Haida land right here on the town line is your seat coming up right toward the boundary from either side. That is Shootsville Hill. So that's Shootsville if that landmark helps to orient you. So, a big part of what we've done in the partnership, and this goes back more than 10 years now before my time with Stowland Trust, and I've been there for almost nine years, is public outreach. Just sessions like this and drawing attention to the corridor and its importance locally, regionally, internationally and doing outreach events and helping people get excited about the fact that this is right here in our backyard. So these are some of the talks that we've done over the years, and there was actually just one last night that Billy helped organize on the Family Forest Carbon Program, so this is an ongoing series that we do. And around the time that we started doing these initial outreach efforts, there was a lot of analysis going on at the state level about forest blocks and how to really think about habitat at a landscape scale. What is it that really matters at these big scales for wildlife? And so these areas in green are big anchor blocks of forest. They're very large, and the smaller one right here is really important, much smaller, but important connecting blocks. We call that connecting block. You can kind of see the fragmentation of that which looks a little like starting to become Swiss cheese with building envelopes and just the human habitation of the landscape that causes the loss of forest cover. And there's another forest block here. So essentially what we're talking about within the corridor in terms of connectivity is this forest cover and the fact that although there are thin and narrow pathways, they do connect and even right here at that main chutesville crossing comes right down to the road. I don't know if any of you have ever seen animals at that point, but I think we were doing a talk early on and on the way to the talk someone saw a moose in the little wetland right there at the corridor hanging out. Is that right? You're nodding out. Yeah, that's right. Nice shot of it. Excellent. They made a right on cue. So you're probably aware the corridor has been part of what really drew it into the public eye was a contentious proposal to put a cell tower right on North Hill right here in the middle of the corridor. So that got a lot of attention and it was that that I think catalyzed the most recent iteration of our partnership where local statewide, fish and wildlife conservation organizations came together and not to fight the cell tower to say this is something that we're going to advocate against but more just in recognition that is such a critical area we really have to work together across town and county lines it's kind of an odd space in which to be doing conservation work and so it attracted the attention of a lot of partners and this is the list of partners who have really been involved our conservation commissions our local land conservation nonprofits, the Vermont Land Trust Nature Conservancy our regional planning commissions Fish and Wildlife Forest Parks and Recreation and the Agency of Transportation because of the Route 100 corridor going through there it's really great group it's really fun working with folks who have these different scales and areas of focus and having a common area that we're all working to help maintain so the strategies that this group of partners kind of came together in 2013-14 to kind of try to figure out what could we do here to keep this area from just disappearing that came out of an initial strategic planning was want to focus on permanent land protection so being Land Trust this is one of the tools we have in our tool kit so if we can protect the forest on either side of the road the even if the road gets harder to cross or you know it's still a really big barrier at least there's habitat there to connect to engagement with planning commissions both municipal and regional because a lot of decisions get made as you know and your local and regional levels when it comes to planning and zoning about land use engaging landowners there's hundreds of landowners in the corridor all of them making different individual decisions about their property and different levels of awareness so engagement and cooperation with landowners has been a big priority for us enhancements to transportation so there's lots of really cool projects out there about improving passage for wildlife under roadways right under bridges trying to figure out how to remove barriers to allow animals to pass and Shoesville is a really interesting spot because there is no culvert or bridge or anything under the road that we could make better for animals to move under or funnel them through there it's just rock so there's like grand visions of well maybe you know an overpass or a bridge for the wildlife to go over the road or the road goes under and we'll do a big dig someday so lots of creative ideas none of them feasible yet but who knows someday but thinking about how to manage roadways and on more secondary or town roads there are lots of culverts and water crossings and places to make improvements so just make it easier and safer for wildlife to cross and then publish public information and awareness is a big part of what we've done as well a really cool part of the project which Alan could speak to in more detail has been getting pictures of the critters in the corridor and collecting some data on different tracks so we know who's actually out there doing some good modeling and we know the forest covers there the habitat is there anecdotally people see evidence of animals but Alan do you want to speak briefly about this project and what you did okay thank you you can't hang out in the back is there other camera stuff do you want me to advance that those are some of the pictures a photo product with NR 206 which is actually a really unique class at UVM that assigns I think freshman maybe sophomore 206 to community projects and so you can go pitch your idea and say hey we'd like some help in this case we want some help doing some presence absence surveys of wildlife in the corridor and cohort students came out and tracking along the roads and provided us some pretty basic information just about yeah we've got species out out there and if you've ever engaged in trying to ask well are there deer out in the woods it doesn't take long to find all the things all the species you expect to find out there so we wanted to expand on that a little bit and put out more cameras and we independent of the students we put out eight cameras on both sides of route 100 for a few years and we got all the species that you'd expect to have bobcat, coyote moose, deer, fisher, mink a lot of cool bird shots people a lot of people a lot of people and some cameras there were many many more people bikes and hiking on their backyards essentially and that's pretty much what this space is from any single point in the corridor you're within half a mile from somebody's house probably one of your houses so we might even have some of you but but you've got a wildlife ecosystem out there that these cameras they didn't take long just for us to go oh okay yeah this place is a living system with families of bears, bobcats hunting, moose traveling throughout this place Jed Murdoch the big moose study that was going on in northeast kingdom for many years finished up a couple of years ago but they put collars on moose in the northeast kingdom and followed them around forever and did some mortality work on them but one of those collared moose ended up in middle sex and it turned around and went back a few days later but we had a ping it wasn't me but they had a ping from that moose on the Elmore side and then on the middle sex side of the Worcester range and then again on the other side of 89 in middle sex but it just goes to show that moose one of the longest ranging wildlife species out here is still quite happy in our backyard so it was really fun and of course these photos are just a ton of fun to see that'll get a deer hunters hackles up these days a wildlife enthusiast will just love those I love seeing bobcat and baby fisher it was a ton of fun the landowners who hosted the cameras really enjoyed seeing these this stuff too because they could bring a greater appreciation to their property and their role in protecting the corridor that took a lot of time for a big slide I think this is what they're most interested in anyway I'm going to talk about land protection anyway I won't go far thank you so this is a representing an analysis that we did collaboratively through the partnership trying to answer the question of well great so this is a 10,000 acre area that's pretty big there's a lot of land in there where are the most important places for wildlife connectivity so this analysis really tried to answer the question of if you were a moose or a bear and you were over here on the mountainside and you wanted to get over there to the Waterbury Reservoir because who wouldn't want to hang out at the Waterbury Reservoir what would be the path of least resistance essentially through forest habitat to get from here to there or if you were there and wanted to get to the other side so this this model is showing and the purple areas represent those places that you can kind of thread through and so it highlighted one you can really notice this pattern of the importance of streams and riparian areas that there's a lot of even if it's narrow being able to travel along those waterways provides a lot of connections and that can be true for hedge rows too although I don't think that showed up in our modeling necessarily but similar kind of concept and then here on Route 100 it showed this was really the key crossing right here at Shootsville Hill right on the town line just like we thought but there's a few other spots along here too that provide some important connections so this really laid the groundwork for both outreach and education this was a walk that we did on one of the properties that we worked with a landowner to conserve and for the larger public talks that we did and broader community engagement I think this is a picture from a family day in the corridor parents and kids it was on the beer farm playing games talking about wildlife get to your kids too photo contest so there were some cool community engagement things that we've done over the years and a Spotlight on Shootsville series in the paper so hopefully some of you saw this it's been a few years since that series and the modeling that we did also was in addition to giving kind of a platform for being able to talk to folks about the important areas in the corridor was really information for towns in terms of informing town plans so just in the most recent 2018 update of the stow town plan so a wildlife corridor is now included and on a map that says this is an important area which was not true I think prior to 2018 and the town of Waterbury I think has had it included for a while before stow did right so the other piece of we were trying to accomplish is securing and ensuring that forest cover will be there for the wildlife and so permanent land protection is kind of what stow land trust and Vermont land trust have brought working with local partners and the nature conservancy to the partnership and part of what we needed to do was raise some money to pay folks for their development rights or in one case for the property outright to try to improve the protections that were in place I think back when we started this there was only maybe two or three properties that had any permanent protection and that represented only about 6% of the corridor so it was pretty vulnerable landscape so we successfully raised $500,000 to just do an initial round of land protection projects and these this is that map again with the priority areas and the parcels in green have conservation easement on them or were purchased and added to state forest in the case of parcel here or were acquired this little 10 acre piece where the moose was the one that was hanging out having its picture taken the nature conservancy was able to purchase that so now after being able to work with a few landowners and acquire and permanently protect a few parcels it's almost 20% of the most important areas shown in purple are protected so that's a pretty significant increase when we look at it there's still a lot of purple that has no protection but it's definitely a good start and we were really excited that when we reached out to some of these folks and shared just how special their land is in the context of the corridor there were people who were excited to work with us and conserve their property so one of those was Eric and Dale Smeltzer who you may know this is their land right here that's not far from the reservoir and they worked with Vermont Land Trust to donate a conservation easement or a donation of development rights on their 300 acres of forest land so they've been long time landowners in Waterbury they really love their woods and they wanted to make sure they had a plan for how it would stay well stewarded and intact in the future it's a but state forest included in addition to the woods a lot of streams and wetlands and other wildlife habitat so they donated an easement on 287 acres and then this area around their house and next to their house was reserved out for a future home site there's a wetland protection zone right here that was included and then protections for the streams on the property and they were really an early adopter one of the folks who early on said they wanted to work with us which was great and inspired a few other people to get on board too so that was really excellent they hosted a game camera and this was from their property is that right Alan? the mothering tubs and through our fundraising efforts we were able to cover the legal and closing costs for the project so that that work was completed in 2020 2020 the first five protection projects and we're currently working on another round and hopeful that we can kind of keep just like connecting a rail trail or a recreation path that goes through a lot of different properties that's a long-term endeavor so I think stringing together protected property is something that we all expect will take time and the effort of many people over time so we just can't keep showing up and checking in with people and seeing if now is the right time and trying to maintain that momentum another the last component of what we've worked on that I mentioned earlier is providing information and connecting landowners with an interest in managing their land with wildlife and connectivity in mind with some technical assistance so this is Andrea Short-Sleeves who was I think she still works for the Department of Official and Wildlife and she at the time did outreach and engagement for landowners across the state so we worked with her to host a workshop for interested folks who wanted to learn more about managing their forest land with wildlife in mind and we're hopeful that we can partner with another great organization that's working on wildlife habitat connectivity up in the Cold Hollow to Canada region so north of us in like Montgomery area and they've developed a really great program where interested landowners in an area form a peer to peer network so they get together once a quarter or so on each other's properties and share information and invite special guests to come and teach them about topics that they are interested in that they've identified and then use that information to help enhance their management and estate planning and kind of support each other for conservation goals and coordinating them and we think it's an awesome program and we would really love to replicate it and bring it to the corridor and provide those kinds of opportunities for interested landowners in our area so that's kind of looking ahead to where we'd like to go there's the program that I mentioned that was just yesterday evening if you missed it and you're interested in learning about what the family forest program is, it was recorded and it should be on our website within the next few weeks so if you check there you can learn more about what that is if you're interested so I think those are the highlights I wanted to on it, is there anything important that you feel like I missed Alan or Billy that you want folks to know? Any questions if we still have time? We do have time Going once, going twice Hey, thank you for your good work Appreciate it Thanks for coming out Alright, well Hopefully first annual photo calendar to support the Friends of Waterbury Reservoir they are for sale, all profits are going to the program and this is also an announcement that next year we are hoping to turn it into a community wide photo contest we're hoping to have somewhere that will host an exhibit showing everybody's photos that we should participate into the photo calendar contest and then the public will be able to come in and vote on them and you know based on the seasons they will potentially get their own month and for those wondering Francine's new nickname is Ms. January that is opening things up but please do check it out there's a few copies down in the back and if you do think you want more or need another one down the road just contact Friends of Waterbury Reservoir and we'd be happy to send one to you or have one ready for you to pick up either at our shop or maybe at the UMEAC absolutely nice so thank you and back to you John thanks Tyler, I appreciate it we also have a booklet back there that we're putting together by one of our greeters showing illustrating the flora that's found around Waterbury Reservoir I think that's it please take some donuts and cider home with you because there's plenty left over and thank you very much for coming