Amphibian Road Crossing Community Science Project (ARC)
Thanks to the novel AVCC Tiny Grant support in the 2021 season, the Hartford Salamander Team (HST) was able to formally join the North Branch Nature Center’s ARC project. This new partnership secured vital professional training and data services to guide and ensure the safety of Salamander Team volunteers, as well as to bolster the scientific value of team efforts.
The virtual training hosted by North Branch Nature Center’s ARC staff attracted over 60 Salamander Team volunteers and interested community members. The training taught protocols in personal safety, safe handling of amphibians, amphibian ecology - as well as how to collect valuable data that can help local planners to take steps to help reduce amphibian roadkill and protect local populations.
Hartford
wetland
Before and during the season, Team members vigorously identified local amphibian crossings and contributed to the regional Amphibian Road Crossing map (available on the Team’s website, at HartfordSalamanderTeam.org), growing the HST’s list of known and suspected amphibian road crossings to over 70 locations. Thus far, volunteers worked more or less independently at these different locations as Amphibian Crossing Guards and data collectors for the ARC community science effort (e.g. with volunteers tallying 37 vehicles and 48 amphibians per hour crossing at one high priority location). Since Our Start, April 2020.
Its honestly hard to tell how many frogs and salamanders we’ve worked with at this point. In our first migration season (April-May 2020) we identified three critical Amphibian Road Crossings, at which we were able to find and ferry 135 amphibians. In 2021, we had volunteers working independently at a more than a dozen spots, and not everyone focused on counting the frogs and salamanders they helped cross the road
North Branch Nature Center
Hartford Conservation Commission
The Hartford Salamander Team'