A New Hampshire Town Is Building Underground Tunnels Just For Salamanders

Every spring in Keene, New Hampshire, wood frogs, spring peepers, red-backed salamanders, spotted salamanders, and Jefferson complex salamanders make a nighttime migration from the upland forests where they spend winter toward the wetlands where they breed. Their path crosses a two-lane road called North Lincoln Street, and for years the only thing standing between those animals and the traffic was a volunteer brigade of people who carried them across by hand with flashlights and reflective vests. It works, but only on nights when enough volunteers show up. A new project, funded by a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, will build small underground tunnels beneath Jordan Road, a site in Keene home to Jefferson complex salamanders, a hybrid between Jefferson and blue-spotted salamanders classified by the state as most in need of conservation, letting the animals pass safely without closing the road or depending on human availability. The project is led by the Harris Center for Conservation Education and is a partnership between the center, the city of Keene, and the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, with construction planned to begin in 2027 in time for the spring migration of 2028.

The proof that it works is 100 miles northwest in Monkton, Vermont, where the state Department of Transportation built a pair of amphibian underpasses in 2015 that reduced amphibian deaths on Monkton Road by 80 percent, a figure that has held through multiple seasons of monitoring. In 2006, before the tunnels existed, more than 1,000 amphibians were killed attempting that crossing in just two nights. What the Vermont project also revealed is that tunnels built for small animals quickly become used by everything else: the Monkton underpasses have now recorded thousands of crossings by mice, squirrels, bobcat, ermine, and even black bear, which the project coordinator described as a genuine surprise. Brett Amy Thelen, science director for the Harris Center who has organized Keene's volunteer salamander brigades for years, said the brigades were always meant to be the first step, not the last step. When the tunnels open, the Jefferson complex salamanders and every other creature that shares their road will have somewhere to go that does not require a volunteer with a flashlight and good timing.

Source:https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/keene-new-hampshire-salamander-tunnel-wildlife-crossing