During warm, wet nights in early spring, thousands of amphibians shake off their winter grogginess and take to the roads. Hardy small mammals scamper along the forest floor and make extensive homes within the cracks of Acadia’s mountains. Some of the park’s smallest creatures, that play outsized roles in nature’s food web, are also some of its most mysterious. Learn about two survey projects asking what it’s like to take the pulse of Acadia National Park on Season 3 Episode 3 of Sea to Trees.
Past, Present, and Future | Ferrying Frogs and Measuring Mice
In the summer of eighteen-eighty … a group of men who called themselves the Champlain Society took the pulse of Mount Desert Island. Not yet called Acadia National Park… the Harvard students documented and collected plants.. birds… and insects all across the island… trekking from its rocky shore lines to its sub-alpine peaks. They kept track of weather patterns like temperature… barometric pressure… and humidity. The Champlain Society’s notes and journals tell us how strong the island's pulse was one hundred and thirty six years ago.
In nineteen nineteen… Florence Bascom… the first female geologist to write about Mount Desert Island… took Acadia’s pulse in a different way. During Bascom’s time… the park was known as Lafayette National Park… but the geology was the same. She described the island as a region of superb natural charm and of no small physiographic and geologic interest. Bascom was awestruck by the deep valleys of Somes Sound and Echo Lake. She reconstructed the island's ancient past… illustrating just how long Acadia’s heart had been beating.
Today… thirty two inventory and monitoring networks dot the country. Their scientists traverse rugged landscapes and venture into distant locations to better understand the resources of our National Parks. They track wildlife… count vegetation… test water quality… measure soil health… and much more.
Past and present research are in constant dialogue. Specimens and observations collected by scientists a hundred years ago give a glimpse of a natural world different from the present. But what happens when there’s a gap… when a particular indicator is missing. When the doctor takes your pulse but not your blood oxygen. It means you aren’t getting a full picture… the full extent of your health. When we look under rocks but not on the roads… when we count the shrews but not the mice.
Sea to Trees is brought to you by Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park. I’m Trevor Grandin. In this episode we’re getting hands on with frogs and mice. We’ll learn about two studies that are taking the pulse of amphibian and small mammal populations in Acadia and how their projects could help keep the park's heartbeat strong in a future that will not resemble the past.
On a misty night in early May… Marisa Monroe and I… wide eyed and on alert…walked along Sieur De Monts road… scanning our headlamps from side to side and surrounded by the sound of spring peepers, searching for amphibians.
*frog noises and walking sounds*
Unsurprisingly… Marisa was the first to spot one of our slimy friends. She set down her clipboard and rolled up her sleeves. Instead of pointing it out right away she chided me to look a little closer.
{Monroe}: Do you see him? {Grandin}: Who? {Monroe}: Look closely! Find him. Keep looking. {Grandin}: Oh this little guy! He is blended in! *Laughing* {Monroe}: I know, he looks like a worm. These are hard to pick up. Hi! Oh my gosh, so beautiful. So I believe this is a… I believe it’s a red backed salamander. It’s a lead-phase, so it doesn’t actually have a red back… *fade*
This delightful salamander lives a dual life in Marisa’s mind – as a wonderful individual whose nightly routine includes basking on warm asphalt but also as one of hundreds of other salamanders whose presence on this specific road… on this specific night will provide valuable data in her research study that aims to protect them.
Marisa… an Acadia Science Fellow and graduate student at the University of Maine… is interested in the distribution and migration habits of Acadia’s amphibians. Along with her dedicated volunteers… she’s spent many of her nights in 2024… scouring the park’s roads… looking for some of its smallest and most porous creatures.
Many of the evenings start out in the same way… On a rainy night when the roads are saturated… volunteers throughout Acadia National Park descend upon their dedicated roadways… ready to tabulate toads.
{Monroe}: We're wearing our safety vests, it's dark, it's in the park. There's really no streetlights out at these sites. So we put on our flashers, and we tried to stay really visible.
Flashlights and headlamps in tow… the volunteers write down site information on their data sheet like… date and start time…temperature… precipitation type… and road wetness
*helicopter noise* Like a search helicopter with a spotlight the volunteers start at the beginning of their stretch of road… marked by a small pink flag staked into the ground… and start to scan.
*walking and frog noises* {Monroe}: Here’s a spring peeper. Oop hello. Oop hello! We’ve got one here and do you know who this is? It’s an eastern newt. New species! {Grandin}: Oop, here we go! {Monroe}: Who’d ya see? Who’d ya see? Ooh! Hey, we’ve got a new species! Hello beautiful!
When an amphibian is found… the volunteer tallies it in the corresponding species box to indicate the number of individuals that were seen. After it’s been counted and appropriately fawned over… the volunteer will wet their hands and carefully ferry the amphibian to the side of the road it was facing.
Wet hands without any perfumes or moisturizers are best for picking up amphibians. Frogs… toads… and salamanders breathe through their skin and need to keep it wet to pull oxygen from the air. Skin products can transfer from the hands to the amphibian causing adverse reactions and trouble breathing. Vinyl and latex gloves carry the same risks of contamination. On top of chemical transfer… gloves could also dry out the amphibian's skin. Their sensitive respiratory systems is part of what makes them an important indicator species of wetland health.
{Monroe}: Sometimes it's not always clear which direction it wants to go. And if it looks like it can go by itself, we just let it sort of herd it over to the side of the road. And that's because we don't want to double count that amphibian as we come back from the other direction. And we also note any dead amphibians on the roads that have been run over by cars already that night.
Taking note of the dead amphibians on the roads is just as important as the live ones… because this project is more than a simple survey. It carries with it the hope to save these creatures from undue mortality. These frogs…salamanders… and toads are on the roads for two major reasons and both are explained by the animal’s life cycle. Time for a refresher!
The word amphibian comes from the ancient Greek roots amphi meaning double and bios meaning life.
Double life… an incredibly literal way to describe the journey of these slippery creatures. In the spring…toads and frogs wake up from their hibernations and lay their eggs in semi protected bodies of water… think ponds without predatory fish… freshwater wetlands… or seasonal vernal pools that fill up with spring rain or snow melt only to evaporate come summer.
Their eggs hatch and the tadpoles start life number one… in the water. They putter around with paddle shaped tails breathing through gills. Then… when the time comes… the juveniles leave their ponds and pools with newly grown arms and legs… making a mad dash to the forest where they will live out the majority of life number two.
Salamanders and newts can differ slightly from this order. Newts have an extra land stage called an eft… before they spend the rest of their adult lives back in the water they crawl around on land like an orange peel with legs. Some salamanders… like the red backed salamander… forgo the water entirely… preferring to lay their eggs inside fallen logs and under moist leaf litter.
So once again… what are all these amphibians doing on the roads? Being cold blooded creatures… they regulate their body temperature using the surrounding environment. Especially during the spring… when amphibians are waking up and thawing out… they need a quick way to get warm again.
Enter… asphalt. Even though the temperature may still be in the upper thirties… most roadways are exposed to sunlight throughout the day… absorbing and retaining its heat. As the sun sets and the air temperature drops… that heat in the pavement dissipates at a much slower rate… creating a natural warming pad perfect for amphibians to hunker down on.
Reason number two for their road affinity is explained through a more… reproductive lens.
{Monroe}: An amphibian might start in the forest like a spotted salamander. And then in the spring, they need to find each other and they need to be in an aquatic environment so they can lay their eggs and fertilize their eggs. So they often have to cross the road. And then, after they're done breeding and laying their eggs, they go back to the forest.
And then, while they are back in the forest their larval salamander, or if you're a frog or a tadpole, they're developing after they hatch from their eggs. And then in a few weeks, they have to leave the pond. And depending on where they want to go or need to go in order to forage for food, they might have to cross another road. So throughout the year, they're doing different things in order to survive and to grow up and to reproduce. And that puts them in conflict with roads often
So that means adults are crossing roads at least twice… once to lay their eggs in a pond or lake and another to high tail it back to their wooded homes. Study and assistance of that early spring migration is historically where much of the effort has gone to… helping the adults lay their eggs and get back across the road after.
Organizations across the country have held amphibian crossing events and supported monitoring networks for decades. When temperatures begin to rise in early spring… volunteers dawn their fluorescent vests and patrol the roadways…fill buckets with frogs… toads… and salamanders (rarely all at once) and ferry them safely to the other side.
Maine Big Night… one such amphibian monitoring organization… has been in operation since twenty-eighteen and has recorded more than twenty-thousand amphibians on the roads. But these early spring events… that focus on assisting the adults… leave a major victim of car strikes unaddressed – their babies.
Marisa and her volunteers have continued their monitoring all throughout the summer and well into the fall… not just during the adult migrations. She hopes that this long term monitoring captures not only the adults but also the juveniles that are left to cross the road all by themselves.
{Monroe}: Why I think that it’s really interesting and important is that even if we save all of the adults that are migrating in the spring to their breeding habitats, if we ignore all their juveniles when they leave the pools and they all get hit by cars their populations may still be at risk for decline or extirpation.
That term Marisa mentioned… extirpation… it means local extinction. It’s extinction on a much smaller scale… the loss of a population of red backed salamanders that once bred in a specific forest now leveled by urban development or the silencing of a once raucous wetland by the tires of a passing car. These once common animals could become uncommon or even rare.
*car door, car turning on*
{Goldfarb}: So you know, here in the US, we kill more than a million vertebrate animals, to say nothing of insects and arachnids, with our cars every single day, right? There's literally nothing that we do that kills more wild animals on land than drive.
That’s author Ben Goldfarb… whose book Crossing: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet underscores the effects that roads have on nature.
{Goldfarb}: We've all seen the dead white tailed deer or raccoon or a possum or gray squirrel by the side of the highway. And you know, of course, all of those individual deaths are tragic, but you know that the animals that we kill most frequently, logically enough, are also the most abundant ones. Right? White tailed deer are not going to go extinct because of roadkill.
For a long time… roadkill was considered collateral damage… an event that nature could balance easily…especially for amphibians whose clutch sizes can sometimes number in the thousands. But in practice… that’s not necessarily the case.
In 1995… biologist Lenore Fahrig and her colleagues published Effect of road traffic on amphibian density in the journal Biological Conservation. They sought to understand the effects of roadways on local amphibian populations. They surveyed three roads along the Rideau River near Ottawa, Canada with differing levels of traffic intensity… from low to high… within a similar wetland habitat. Their research practices included noting the number of dead frogs on the road and the intensity of frog vocalizations in the surrounding wetlands.
The data they collected…were shocking but not unforeseen.
The roads with lower traffic density… fewer cars driving by… had more dead frogs than higher traffic areas. Why? Because the populations in the high traffic areas had already been negatively impacted. There were fewer frogs crossing the roads because there were fewer frogs breeding in that location. They also heard fewer frogs on the high density roads. Fahrig and her colleagues underscored that cars can play a role in animal populations… in some instances seriously hurting them.
{Goldfarb}: And, you know, I think that in some ways we are very focused on the extinction crisis, right? We're in the middle of the sixth mass extinction. You always hear that, that phrase, and certainly that's a huge problem. But I think that an almost bigger issue, in some ways, is common species becoming increasingly rare, right, as those individual populations get extirpated.
And that’s what Marisa is trying to prevent with her research. As visitation to National Parks is trending up… including at Acadia… protecting the wildlife that call this island home is a top priority. With more visitors in the park and more cars on the road… the possibility of amphibian/automobile collisions rises greatly.
Acadia is covered in more than thirty miles of roads that connect culturally significant and visually stunning landmarks all across the island. The roads provide access to a number of wetlands… a habitat that makes up more than twenty percent of Acadia’s parkland. Some of these wetlands… like Great Meadow… are fed by freshwater streams… while some… like Bass Harbor Marsh… are salt marshes that ebb and flow with the tidal clock.
The fifteen sites that Marisa and her volunteers survey range in popularity from busy portions of Park Loop Road to silent stretches of Schoodic Peninsula. For every survey location… a volunteer carries with them a bright green data sheet printed on waterproof paper. They mark the age of the amphibian… adult or juvenile… whether it’s alive or dead… and its species.
There are thirteen different species of amphibian that have been documented in Acadia National Park and eighteen in the state of Maine. The American Toad makes up Acadia’s one lone toad species. There are six frog species that include the American bullfrog… green frog… gray tree frog… spring peeper… and
{Monroe}: We’ve got a new species! Hello beautiful! This is a pickerel frog, a very common frog and beautiful. So this frog sometimes gets confused for a leopard frog and if anyone sees a leopard frog in Acadia they should take a picture because we don’t actually have any photographic evidence that they are here.
There are six salamander species. The spotted salamander… red-backed salamander… northern dusky salamander… northern two lined salamander… and
{Monroe}: Oh! It’s a new species. This is a four toed salamander. See how he’s got this little pug nose. And it looks like there’s a little constriction at the base of his tale, right there. And then you can see that his tail looks like a different color than his body. And then her belly is a beautiful spotted salt and pepper. Beautiful belly. And they’ve got four toes on their back feet, one of the tiniest feet you’ll ever see.
The last salamander… the eastern newt… is commonly found waddling across wet roadways on spring nights… but not in the form one would expect. Newts have that one extra step in the middle of their larval and adult stages mentioned earlier called a Red Eft… E-F-T. Bright orange and slow moving… these critters are hard to miss.
{Monroe}: And then, do you know who this is? {Grandin}: No! {Monroe}: It’s an eastern newt. It’s actually his juvenile form, he’s a red eft. Uhh… he’s not sexually mature yet and then when he’s ready or she’s ready to be an adult they go to an aquatic habitat and they transform into a more olive green newt that looks completely different than this. Instead of this rounder tail it’ll have more of a paddle tail that’s more adapted to swimming. And then of course they also have their larval form where they have gills.
Although it’s perfectly safe to handle red efts… their bright coloring broadcasts an important message in the animal kingdom:
I am highly poisonous… you do not want to eat me. This tactic… called aposematism… is important for such a small and edible creature. Where some salamanders wear their toxicity on their sleeve… some fill an outsized role as food for other animals.
A recent article published in the journal Biological Letters found that the number of salamanders living in northeastern US forests is much higher than once thought. It suggested that the biomass of red backed salamanders in a given forest in the Northeast was higher than any other vertebrate present. These abundant salamanders provide an important food source for birds… snakes… and small mammals… but as we’ve heard… ubiquity does not spare a species from extirpation.
{Wheeler}: In wildlife biology and in the management of parks these thresholds for mass mortality events, and so whether that is a harbor seal die off, or whether that is a die off of crows or sea birds.
That’s Bik Wheeler… wildlife biologist at Acadia National Park. He’s one of the National Park Service managers that could benefit the most from Marisa’s study.
{Wheeler}: And so we have these thresholds for mass mortality events, and we don't have that for amphibians. And realistically, if we just apply those same thresholds to amphibians which are another vertebrate in the park, then every night would be a mass mortality event, right? Every night that they're moving on the roads would be a mass mortality event, which is something that we probably shouldn't ignore.
Sometimes in science… there’s a rift between the research and the application. How do you get from the study results and information to on the ground implementation? For managers like Bik… that’s what’s most exciting about Marisa’s study. Not only do they know the problem… amphibian’s getting hit by cars… but they also know the fix… less driving in high traffic migration areas.
{Wheeler}: Let's do the applied sciences stuff. Let's make the fixes. It's time to get out of the ivory tower and start getting on the ground and doing work. And I do appreciate that mentality, but certainly coming from a place based ecological perspective, like here at a park where our ivory tower is at ground level, right?... So that's what's been really exciting about this, is both to understand where and when mortality or migration is happening, so that we can mitigate that with different management strategies, but then also to understand, just as a the natural history of these different species, of which species are moving when, and in relationship to different weather events and to get the full picture is really greatest.
According to the United States Geological Survey’s State of the Amphibians… scientists predict an annual three point seven percent decrease in amphibian populations across the country. With declines already threatening thirty percent of the world's approximately seven thousand amphibian species… a hands off approach could see quote ‘the average amphibian species gone from half of the places where it now occurs in < 20 years.’ As far as park managers can tell… Acadia’s amphibian populations aren’t on the brink of collapse… but with global populations trending down and cars posing such an obvious an cause of mortality… conservation efforts are looking towards the future.
A little more than one eighth of US land is designated as protected and conserved. Two thousand and fifty threatened and endangered animals… plants… and fungi call that land home. And the overlap for those statistics is huge. National Parks and conservation areas across the country play an outsized role in preserving biodiversity and catching declines well before they become critical. That’s why it’s important to understand Acadia’s amphibians today… so we can better protect them tomorrow.
{Monroe}: Yeah, what’s really exciting about this project and why I’m excited to do it is that the park wants the data so they want to be able to do some sort of mitigation. Depending on what we find that could be maybe we close roads on certain nights if we can predict movements or we could possibly build a specially designed culvert for amphibians or maybe you continue with volunteer assisted migrations. But the park is interested in saving their amphibians. Which is exciting that there’s a lot of motivation behind this project.
That motivation could be the difference between a wetland teaming with life and a silent pond without frogs… a strong heartbeat and one that is starting to weaken… and there are researchers all across the park monitoring the strength of Acadia’s heartbeat. As we’ve just learned and will hear next… the parks smallest creatures play an outsized role in its success. From the amphibian pedestrians to the small mammals that run Acadia’s terrestrial kitchen.
Part 2: If you give a mouse a cookie.
On an early morning in mid-June… I met up with a group of researchers in the parking lot of the Schoodic Woods campground. As we walked down one of the gravel paths that snake throughout the peninsula… we made a sudden turn directly into the woods.
{Slabach}: Here, because of the habitat we’ll walk the lines together. So we’ll walk T1 and then we’ll turn around and walk T2. Feel free to ask questions. We’re all open books and they’ve been doing this for a while. You guys want to lead? It’s your line.
As we pushed through branches and swerved to avoid stepping on ferns… the researchers stopped every few yards… knelt down… and slapped their hands against little silver boxes… closing the front doors to these metal traps.
{Nguyen}: What time is it? {Slaback}: It is 5:13
This group of researchers is made up of College of the Atlantic professor and Second Century Stewardship Fellow Brittany Slabach and Trinity College students Dylan Nguyen and Genevieve Ellis… or as they’re known over their walkie talkies…
{Slabach}: So trail names – I’m Goose. That’s Sassquatch with two esses because she’s sassy, as you just heard, and that’s Shawty over there. *laughing*
The small rectangular traps they’re closing look like mobile homes for mice… and for a lack of better words that’s exactly what they are. Filled with a synthetic polyfill and a tasty snack of peanut butter… bird seed… and mealworms… this research team is in search of small mammals.
We walked along one of two transects in Schoodic Woods. Dylan and Genevieve checked each trap for a capture and closed any that were still open. Since many of their target species are partially nocturnal… they set up their traps in the evening… let them sit overnight… and check them early in the morning.
And after several empty traps… we find the first one with a closed door…
{Slabach}: This is fourteen. {Nguyen}: Capture {Slabach}: What kind of friend? {Nguyen}: I can not see due to the polyfill {Slabach}: Stinky one
Peering into the trap… the rodent's identity is uncovered.
{Slabach}: Hi buddy! That looks to be a southern red backed vole and that looks to be a new capture. Okay! Let’s work this guy out. Okay, so capture and a large
Taking off her backpack… Brittany takes out a plastic… see-through briefcase filled with scientific gadgets and gizmos. Tube scales… ear tagging equipment… and syringes mixed with rulers… plastic bags… and small zip ties.
{Slabach}: If we start getting a lot of captures that’s when we’d split up and check lines and we’ll get an idea of how many captures we have and we make a game plan. Our number one concern at all times is the well being of the organisms. I didn’t see an ear tag so I’m gonna get one ready Dillon. So it’s oh-five-three-five, this is Schwoods, tee-one, station fourteen, large Sherman. Hold off on the species till I get it out. The tag number is eight-nine-one.
Medical gloves on her hands… Brittany empties the contents of the trap… vole and all… into a gallon size plastic bag.
{Slabach}: So I don’t see an ear tag and I don’t see a rip in the ear.
These guys can rip out their ear tags sometimes. So this is a southern red backed vole. It's interesting if you read the field guide so they'll say they have more of a blunt nose. Their external pinnae, their ears here, they’re not as large as deer mice and they have a shorter tail.
So these guys are typically species found mostly in old growth forests. They’re not great climbers… We’ve got a scrotal male. We had a pregnant female and I told you there had to at least be one more… I know, I know.
They weigh the animal by clipping the bag… with the vole inside… to a tube scale then weighing the bag again when they’ve let the vole go. Grasping the vole by the nape of the neck… like a cat does her kittens… Brittany takes measurements of the major body parts.
At minimum… Brittany’s crew measures the organism's weight and various body lengths. If it’s a new capture… an ear tag is attached. As much data as possible is taken but stress levels and cooperation are always taken into account.
{Slabach}: We do take genetic samples. The target for that is deer mice because you cannot tell the species apart phenotypically. A lot of times when you get your hands on an organism you try and get all of the information you can. That's why we take body measurements, we take weight, we take hind foot, ear length, tail length, those are all standard measurements.
Dr. Slabach’s work here in Schoodic Woods… laying out traps and coaxing some of Acadia’s smallest residents inside… is part of a larger rodent survey happening in the park's lowest and highest places. The question at the center of the research is human disturbance and how it affects Acadia’s small mammals. But disturbance can take many different forms. That’s why there are two branches to Brittany’s research.
Branch number one: the Schoodic Peninsula and Schoodic Woods.
The northern half of the Schoodic Peninsula is a relatively newer part of Acadia National Park and was selectively logged for red spruce before the Schoodic Woods campground and visitors center were built in twenty-fifteen. That means there’s a distinct line between the selectively logged… disturbed… shrubby habitat of the north and the undisturbed old growth habitat closer to Schoodic Point which has been protected for much longer.
Brittany and her team are trying to understand how historical disturbances… like logging and human recreation might affect the present state of a forest. That takes the form of trapping rodents in these differing but neighboring habitats to understand what animals are present… how they are moving between the two habitats… and what habitats they prefer.
{Slabach}: There’s been a lot of questions that have come up about these competitive interactions but also if we’re thinking about this over the long term and really the broad question of how historical landscape disturbance can influence in our case small mammal population distribution and small mammal ecology, to me that’s a really interesting question. If we think about how forests are changing, what they look like now and what that past landscape disturbance looked like and how that could be influencing what they look like now we can start to look at projection in the future.
Branch number two: Restoration efforts on Acadia’s mountains
Restoration projects at the top of Cadillac… Sargent… and Penobscot mountains… supported by Friends of Acadia and Schoodic Institute in partnership with the National Park Service… are trying to revegetate and regrow sensitive plant communities that have been trampled by heavy foot traffic and off-trail hiking. Soil and seeds are trekked up the mountain and spread on historic plant plots to promote growth… but that seeding is bringing new resources like burlap… seeds… and soil… into already established habitats.
To understand how these small mammals are interacting with the restoration efforts… Brittany and her team set traps on two mountains with active restoration projects: Sargent and Cadillac and one mountain without restoration efforts that would act as the control or unchanged habitat… Pemetic Mountain.
I caught up with her after our field excursion to talk about it.
{Slabach}: We set cameras on this, on the summits, because we're interested in just what uses them in general. And we have some cameras out on some of the vegetation plots. We have lots of pictures of mice stealing seeds from the vegetation plots and, doing telemetry, we saw them out and about on just bald rock when like 25 mile an hour winds at 1130 at night, just munching on some sandwort, which just provides a totally different view in my brain of how hardy these individuals are.
That hardiness is a valued asset when almost every predator wants a piece of you. Mice and other small mammals are a major provider in the larger food web. They make up the diet of birds like hawks and owls… snakes… and even land mammals like otters and fisher cats. They, too, play an outsized role in helping managers understand the wider health of the park.
{Wheeler}: Everybody loves to eat them. Everybody gets diseases from them. Everybody is, you know, playing a role with these.
Wildlife biologist Bik Wheeler again.
{Wheeler}: and so they're really critical to understanding small mammals, and their relationships and dynamics. Is critical to understanding what is available and what is going on with other species that interact with them, which is widespread, and so the importance of a mouse is almost always overlooked.
Not anymore. Though this is only the second year of trapping for Brittany and her team… the preliminary data is already uncovering some interesting information about small mammal populations at the top of these mountain habitats.
{Slabach}: But on the summits, summits that either are actually being restored or have restoration activities of some sort on them, it's a much higher abundance just overall capture numbers compared to those that are not. And so whether this has something to do with the restoration itself or if it's a year factor, we're not sure, right, correlation does not equal causation. We say that all the time in science, but, I mean, there's just a stark difference in those and so that's something that we're really interested in.
Then comes the dreaded question for any research project… what is this used for? Where does the information that comes from this study go and how does it get used? Much like Marisa’s project… Brittany wants the work she does to have real world uses for management and conservation.
{Slabach}: Conducting research for the sake of research is fascinating and fun, but it needs to be useful. And I want to provide information that we can use, whether it's to better understand species distribution pattern, ecology, behavior, management decisions, right? Like, let's use this data so it can inform conservation and management.
For her peninsula trapping she wants to improve predictive models that could help us understand the future of animal populations. If you know what habitats and biomes certain animals prefer and thrive in… coupling that with historic disturbance information could better articulate the future of local species.
{Slabach}: If we start to think about how forests are changing if we understand what they look like now and what that past landscape disturbance looked like and how that could be influencing what they look like now we can start to think about projection in the future. I want a forest that has all different types of species in it, I want lots of red backed voles, they do something very different than peromyscus do, right! And it’s good for the forest, so trying to piece out what is it about these sites that these organisms are really interested in, what’s attracting them and then also what these competitive interactions might be if any is something that we’re interested in.
The management implications for Brittany’s mountain trapping research is in dialogue with how we decide to restore an ecosystem. Revegetating struggling plant communities is an undeniably good thing but how that revegetation happens and what communities it affects is an important piece of the puzzle.
{Slabach}: And you know, if there is evidence, after a couple years that maybe it's the restorations resulting in a non-target kind of animal issue, that's something that I hope that we would consider, right?
Back in the woods… Brittany, her crew, and I came upon another trap with its front hatch already closed. Excitedly… we gathered around the small metal box. Gloves on and plastic bag at the ready… Brittany peered into the trap expectantly. Tipping the contents into the bag she says…
{Slabach}: This is a woodland jumping mouse.
Swimming inside the plastic bag is an orange mouse with long hind feet and an even longer tail. It wiggled from edge to edge of the bag looking for an exit.
{Slabach}: Bright orange and it’s got that dark mohawk and it looks like it’s a new capture. So you see that long beautiful tail and it looks like we’ve got a kink in the tail guys. So the woodlands have this white spot on the tail compared to the meadow. You can see those beautiful hind feet and they’re just feisty.
As the jumping mouse slid around the plastic bag… Brittany hooked the tube scale to the top and tried to measure the mouse's weight.
{Slabach}: I know, I know, I know. Thirty two grams. One of their escape mechanisms is they jump. These guys can actually jump, I believe, up to three meters. This is gonna be a smushed body length, Dylan. This guy’s moving quite a bit on me. So yeah, fifty for body, put in the notes please that it’s smushed. Let’s see if we can get this guy out.
Opening up the bag and dipping her gloved hand inside Brittany… pinched his back… and carefully raised him into the fresh air. She clutched her ruler and started to inspect the mouse.
{Slabach}: Nope, nope, nope. He can turn on you with those big ‘ol.
As Brittany’s spoke… the mouse twisted its body in her hand and like a swimmer at the starting block placed its two hind feet against her palm.
{Slabach}: Okay, bag please, bag please, bag please, bag please, bag please, bag please. So these guys can really turn on you if they get that hind foot on you and that’s why you gotta keep a hold of their tail.
After a few more measurements… the team decided to put an ear tag on him and let him go. Leaping from Brittany’s hand… the mouse dove into the brush and disappeared with a series of hops.
Beyond the research and data… the communities that interact with these studies add a dimension to already very impactful research projects. Brittany and her team started an Instagram account called The Little Box Project… posting photos from the field that include inquisitive racoons manhandling mammal traps and team selfies from successful summit days. Since her mountain traps are sometimes found by curious hikers… Brittany wrote her name and project information on every metal box and often gets texts or calls asking questions about the project.
{Slabach}: There's so many people who would stop and kind of ask questions, and some of them would see our traps out, and they'd holler at us, like, what are these yours, you know? And I had three wonderful students working with me, and they would always get really excited to answer questions and show them our telemetry gear. And you know, we had really great, wonderful conversations with lots of people. And so we're just, you know, the science education piece is really important to me, and I think it's also really something I want my students to participate in.
Then there’s Marisa’s project that’s almost entirely driven by willing community members… and citizen scientists who often live just down the road from their research plots. Some volunteers also came with valuable knowledge of where they’ve seen major amphibian migrations in the past.
{Monroe}: I'm not from Mount Desert Island. I'm not even from Maine. And the people involved in this work are, I mean, most of them are from the island. And I've even heard of amphibian crossing sites from them. But they are the members of their community that are sort of involved in this work. So it's been really nice to have them so heavily involved like I get to build more of a partnership than me coming into their island and doing work all by myself.
Those communities… whether they’re made up of plants… birds… or people… make Acadia’s heartbeat stronger. Through the years we’ve taken the pulse of the park in many ways… by looking under leaves… searching the skies… or reading the rocks. For over one hundred and fifty years park managers and researchers have been painting a picture and finding out what makes Acadia National Park keep ticking. Now it’s time to see the park through the eyes of its smallest and most influential creatures.
The legacy of Acadia spans many lifetimes but one universal truth can be identified… the same heart continues to beat. The same rocks tumble on the shore… the same trees stipple the mountain sides. Marisa and Brittany’s research projects are helping managers better understand how our hearts can beat in rhythm with Acadia’s… how our priorities of stewardship and protection can better serve the land. Acadia’s heart will continue to pump regardless of our presence… but whether that beating includes bullfrog songs and the patter of tiny feet against hollow ground will be up to us.
Thank you for listening to Sea to Trees, a podcast from Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park. Acadia National Park is on the traditional lands of the Wabanaki, People of the Dawn. This show was made by Trevor Grandin, the Cathy and Jim Gero Acadia Early Career Fellow in Science Communication. Catherine Schmitt is our senior editor. The cover art was created by Sarah Luchini.
Special thanks to Marisa Monroe, Ben Goldfarb, Brittany Slabach, and Bik Wheeler for sharing their expertise with us.
As a nonprofit partner of the National Park Service, Schoodic Institute inspires science, learning, and community for a changing world. To learn more visit schoodicinstitute.org.
{Monroe}: What sound does a newt make walking? {Grandin}: I don’t know, what sound does a newt make walking? {Monroe}: No, I thought maybe you could pick it up on your microphone! {Grandin}: Oh! I thought you were telling an amphibian joke!
Description: During warm, wet nights in early spring, thousands of amphibians shake off their winter grogginess and take to the roads. Hardy small mammals scamper along the forest floor and make extensive homes within the cracks of Acadia’s mountains. Some of the park’s smallest creatures, that play outsized roles in nature’s food web, are also some of its most mysterious. Which of Acadia’s roadways sees the most traffic from Spring Peepers? What about amphibian traffic the rest of the year? How are the park’s deer mice interacting with restoration projects on Sargent Mountain? Learn about two survey projects asking these questions and more. We find out what it’s like to take the pulse of Acadia National Park on Season 3 Episode 3 of Sea to Trees.
Maine Big Night https://mainebignight.org/
Crossings by Ben Goldfarb https://www.bengoldfarb.com/crossings
Little Box Project | Instagram https://www.instagram.com/littleboxproject
Effect of road traffic on amphibian density by Lenore Fahrig, et al. https://escholarship.org/content/qt22t1h3q1/qt22t1h3q1.pdf
Study finds salamanders are surprisingly abundant in northeastern forests https://www.usgs.gov/news/national-news-release/study-finds-salamanders-are-surprisingly-abundant-northeastern-forests
