MAINE MONITOR • April 23, 2023
The woods and the internet were a twitter this week with the sound of spring peepers and the happy volunteers helping them safely cross to their spring breeding sites around the state. Started five years ago as a project by Greg LeClair during his senior year at Unity College, Maine Big Night is a citizen science project focused on the relatively warm (mid-40s), wet nights in early spring during which amphibians journey from their winter hibernating spots to their breeding grounds in vernal pools and wetlands. “Amphibians do a lot for us,” LeClair told the Natural Resources Council of Maine, which honored the University of Maine graduate with a Brookie Award last year. “Anything from telling us the environment is healthy to sequestering carbon…what we’re doing is just assisting them across the road and then also collecting data on those road crossings so that we know where these highly important sites are to protect in the future.”