MORNING SENTINEL • June 3, 2022
Greg LeClair was 7 when he began his career in environmental scienc. He went outside one warm, rainy, April night and noticed something extraordinary in his driveway — a 7-inch long salamander. Every spring after that, he went searching for nighttime salamanders, frogs and other amphibians crossing roads. He began picking up the ones that were alive and carrying them to the side of the road in the direction they were traveling. He continued this practice while a student at Oak Hill High School in Wales, from which he graduated in 2014, and then at Unity College where he majored in wildlife biology. During his senior year in 2015, he organized it into a full-blown program and he and volunteers recorded data. It grew exponentially. LeClair, 26, now a doctoral candidate at UMaine, called the program Maine Big Night, which had its largest year this year, involving about 400 volunteers from Aroostook County to the coast. Participants since 2018 have helped move to safety more than 10,000 amphibians.