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View ProfilesPublished July 12, 2023 at 10:00 a.m. | Updated July 12, 2023 at 12:02 p.m.
Vermont's naturalists are hard to find. They tend to spend a lot of time alone in the woods. Still, University of Vermont field naturalist Alicia Daniel suspected they might be longing to meet and learn from one another. And she thought she knew a way to lure them out.
"The bait was 'We're going to teach you the natural history of your town,' and ... boom," she said. They showed up.
Daniel, 62, founded the Vermont Master Naturalist program in 2016 to help the state's nature lovers build community, deepen their knowledge and plug into local conservation efforts. Within two years, she established programs in Richmond, South Hero, Williston and the Bristol five-town region. As of 2023, VMN has expanded to 18 towns across Vermont.
Daniel defines a naturalist as "someone in love with nature, who makes a study of it" — not necessarily as a profession but as a practice. VMN is open to anyone who has shown a sustained interest in at least one natural history discipline, such as birding, geology, wildlife tracking or botany. For a fee of $650, accepted students commit to nine months of study and attend five field days to receive 30 hours of training specific to the natural history of their town or region.
Each field day takes place at a different location and focuses on a specific aspect of the region's natural history, from the bedrock beneath the soil to the birds far above. Students also commit to a 20-hour volunteer conservation project in coordination with a local community partner.
Daniel adapted VMN's landscape-level approach from the UVM Field Naturalist Program, a master of science course of study where she has taught for more than 30 years. Over time, she explained, she became accustomed to boiling down graduate-level course material for undergraduates and others who were new to the field.
"You can go from teaching people with a lot of experience in some field, whether it's wildlife or geology or botany, and you can [translate] it to an undergraduate level. I had done it for several years," she said. "Then I thought, Who else would want to do this?"
Daniel also served as the City of Burlington's field naturalist for seven years. Her highly popular BTV Conservation News email newsletters got her thinking about all the nature lovers out there who might appreciate an opportunity to learn.
Since she launched VMN, its original network of 40 or so people has grown to more than 400 graduates and current students. In May, 20 of them descended on Killarney Drive in Burlington's New North End for VMN's inaugural Tier II program.
The group contained educators, professionals and entrepreneurs; students, volunteers and retirees. One toted a very willing toddler. But all were graduates of previous VMN programs, meeting up for a second year of study to deepen their learning and connections. Tier II is a testimony to the program's momentum.
Daniel greeted the group wearing a blue windbreaker and faded black jeans, her hair tied back under a denim cap embroidered with the VMN logo. After a round of introductions, she sketched the day's agenda: a meandering four-mile loop from the bike path to Rock Point to a secret patch of forest reputed to contain scores of spring ephemerals, another name for the delicate woodland wildflowers that bloom in the fleeting weeks before trees' leaves block the sun. The group would explore a slice of the Burlington "layer cake" of natural history, from the Champlain Thrust Fault to the perennial woodland starflower.
"People actually fly here from Amsterdam to see this place," Daniel said of the former. "Thrust faults are fairly common, but geologically it's quite rare to have them exposed right at the surface where you can see them."
Daniel's teaching style is humble and low-key. For much of the day, she took a back seat, challenging the group with the occasional question and pointing out key landscape features to weave them into an expansive story of time and place.
Over six hours, the group examined details large and small, from soil samples to the exposed fault layers jutting above Lake Champlain to the wide, tangled shapes of the oldest trees in the forest on Rock Point. Those trees were free to stretch out on bare pastures until a second generation of forest grew up around them.
The toddler napped comfortably in her father's arms. Someone found a bird's nest hanging from the low branch of a sugar maple. Another person shared maps of ancient Earth as the group stared across the lake at the Adirondack Mountains — which, everyone learned, are rising about a foot per century. People swapped insect repellent strategies, bird identifications and stories about Daniel's impact.
Roberta "Bert" Nubile of South Burlington has known Daniel for 20 years. In addition to being a VMN student, she has served as the program coordinator for VMN South Burlington.
"I just can't get enough of this, the way Alicia presents information," Nubile said as she navigated the rocky beach. "She makes it accessible. She makes you feel heard. Her personality — that's what really makes this program."
Pamela "flask" Gude of Bolton agrees. "This program was absolutely life transforming for me," she wrote in an email after the event. Gude, a conservation advocate and educator who serves as the vice chair of her town's conservation commission, added, "It gave me the tools to begin my life's second act."
VMN has inspired community action in a number of ways. Chapin Kaynor of Williston graduated from VMN Williston in 2019 and went on to become one of two local conservationists certified by the state Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets to manage invasive species such as buckthorn through targeted herbicide use. He is also two years into a project called Tree Island that involves planting or transplanting more than 300 trees onto a small knoll beside the Allen Brook School in Williston to spur the pastureland's progression to hardwood forest. Scores of kindergartners have planted and watered oaks and sugar maples and learned about invasive species management.
"Taking the VMN class, partly because I had to find local projects to fulfill the requirements, led to much more volunteering in conservation in my community," Kaynor said. "That's been very rewarding for me."
Curt Lindberg, of VMN Winooski Headwaters, was inspired to bring the program to the Mad River Valley, which is currently taking applications for the fall. He also coedited the 2022 book Our Better Nature: Hopeful Excursions in Saving Biodiversity.
"It was just another example of this community of people who care about nature and the state kind of coming together," Lindberg said. "I think the experience I had in the field naturalist program gave me the energy and inspiration to help nurture that along."
Other post-program projects are under way across the state, from riparian restoration in the Mad River Valley to tree tracking in Charlotte to wildlife monitoring in South Burlington.
Behind this web of activity is Daniel, a passionate conservationist who remembers trying to befriend chipmunks as a small child. Later, while working as the research director for Texas' Senate Committee on Natural Resources & Economic Development, she wrote articles for the Texas Observer under a pseudonym, critiquing the government's response to an outbreak of southern pine beetle.
"I just cared about nature," she said.
For the last part of the day, VMN's Tier II cohort followed Daniel to the aforementioned secret forested spot along the bike path. The group fanned out in a clearing to test the pH of the soil. It turned out to be much more alkaline than the soil nearer to the beach in the creek bed, because it contains the prehistoric lake-bottom sediment the group had discussed earlier in the day. In this forest, the bedrock also held more nutrients than the sand, making it an ideal spot for spring ephemerals.
As the group moved deeper into the woods, folks' voices grew excited. They found large white trillium. Dutchman's breeches. Large-flowered bellwort and early meadow rue. Red columbine and fringed polygala. And then, a glade of yellow lady's slippers. Scores, maybe hundreds of them.
"I may cry!" someone squealed.
"It looks like someone cultivated this," another person said.
The participants trudged back to their cars, tired but satisfied, clearly all in their element. The program had just begun, but they'd already found their reason for returning. Someday, some of them would come back to teach others.
"The cool thing is, it's only partly me. It's really us," Daniel said of the program. "This thing hatched and ran away, and I'm still trying to keep up with it. It really took off."
The original print version of this article was headlined "Second Nature | The Vermont Master Naturalist program connects locals through the landscape"
Tags: Outdoors & Recreation, Vermont Master Naturalist, Alicia Daniel, naturalist program, naturalist
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