Historic flooding in Connecticut last month destroyed homes, businesses and roads, and several people lost their lives. And now, State environmental officials are assessing the impact on local wildlife.
WSHU’s Sabrina Garone spoke with Jenny Dickson, director of the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection’s wildlife division.
WSHU: Tell me about the day-to-day life for you and your team has been like post-storm.
JD: We certainly had a lot of activity. A lot of it was assessing initial damage, seeing if people could get to our wildlife management areas, if there were incidents and things we needed to think about from a public safety standpoint — so, that certainly comes first. We had a lot of issues with state parks, and things like that. For our wildlife management areas, luckily the damage was contained to access-related issues. But some of those places we haven't had a chance to do a thorough assessment on, so it may take us months before we can see what trees might have come down, brooks washed out. The same goes for our state forests. Obviously, they cover hundreds of acres in some cases, so that's an ongoing process over the next several months.
WSHU: In general, how has the state of our local wildlife changed since the flooding?
JD: We've got some areas that are just not accessible right now, so it's limiting people's ability to watch wildlife or hunt. Hunting season is coming up, and there are areas that we probably won't be open to certain kinds of things. Pheasant season is coming up, for example. There's just so much damage either to the roadways where you can hunt or the actual fields themselves. We'll probably have to find new locations.
WSHU: Were there any ongoing conservation projects in the valley area disturbed by all this?
JD: The good thing about nature-based projects is that they're resilient. Even though it might have taken us a step back for some of our habitat management projects, we can pick up and start over again. We'll just have to change our approach. Some of the challenges will be in areas where we've had major wash-outs of streams, brooks and crossings. It'll take a while to put stream banks back together again, or figure out how we're going to connect walks of habitat if they've been separated. Those are the more challenging things that are going to come over time.
WSHU: When I see these photos and videos of the streams washing out, I wonder where the fish go. Do you have any information on that?
JD: The short answer is downstream, and I know that It sounds like an obvious answer, but that's absolutely what happens to some of the fish, turtles, some of the other amphibians that are stream-based, frogs, and things like that. The velocity of the water is so fast that they can't swim against it, so it usually moves them downstream. How long it takes for them to work their way back upstream? It depends a lot on whether there are major obstructions getting them from point A to point B.
WSHU: What about land mammals? Do downed trees or road wash-outs impact them, as well?
JD: It's going to impact their movement patterns a little bit. It may force them to move in directions in their territory that they might not otherwise have taken. They might have to take a different route to get to their favorite place to graze if it's a deer, or to hunt if it's a fox. And in some cases, it may separate some parts of their territory, so they will have to make some shifts. If it's a heavily impacted area, they may be unable to make some of the crossings they made before.
WSHU: What’s next? What do the next couple of weeks and months look like for you?
JD: A lot of it is going to be collecting information from members of our staff, but also the public on what they're seeing out there in real-time — different animals, where they see different animals occurring. That gives us a better sense of how some of those movement corridors have changed and potentially how far some of those species have been relocated.
A number of our wildlife coordinators have reported getting in several hawks and owls that have been impacted by the storm, the wind, and the intensity of the rain, and got drenched. They needed a safe space to recover, dry out, and get ready to be released again. So that's something we saw for a species we probably wouldn't think too much about being impacted by weather events like this. One of the things that will take a little longer for us to assess is freshwater mussels or other aquatic invertebrates that don't have the ability to move quickly on their own. If they got uprooted by the water moving through, that's going to be a challenging trip for them downstream. If they are able to stay rooted to the bottom of the stream, they can get a layer of sediment that is then deposited on top of them. If it's thick enough, they're not able to filter food like they normally would. So, for us, it's not just a matter of looking at the bigger things we see in the landscape. Those species are not only important from a wildlife perspective, but they're also key food items for a lot of other species in the system. It's all part of seeing how the ecosystem balance was impacted and how it will adjust over time.
WSHU: Is there anything else you think folks should know about this situation?
JD: One of the things that people can do if they are worried about wildlife and future storms is to think about making habitats, whether it's your backyard or a community space, as resilient as possible. Controlling invasive plant species and using native plants for landscaping — are great ways to help adjust to and make habitats resilient to storms in the future. Native plants and species are adapted to changes in our environment, so the more healthy the habitat, the more wildlife can sustain these unusual storm events.
