Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship.
MONTPELIER — On winter Sunday mornings in Montpelier, a small group of wildlife enthusiasts strap on snowshoes and head out into the woods.
They are on the lookout for animal tracks. And when they find prints in the snow, the investigation begins. Who passed through here, and why?
This is the weekly Wildlife Tracking Club at the North Branch Nature Center, led by professional trackers like Ana Maria Orroyo.
Orroyo is a teacher-naturalist at North Branch Nature Center. She said tracking is a way to read stories in the environment about animals and how they interact with the world.
“The question you’re asking — ‘What happened here?’ — is answered by studying changes in the environment,” she said. “So that could be a footprint, that could be broken branches, that could be chewed sticks by a pond.”
In the gray weeks between December and March, Orroyo said Tracking Club is an accessible outlet for getting outside during the winter — and staying curious.
“There’s kind of an irresistible desire, especially in the winter in Vermont, to look at tracks in your driveway or on the sidewalk and just wonder, ‘Oh, I wonder what that was.’”
Sean Beckett, the program director at North Branch Nature Center, said wildlife tracking can make people more aware of the lives of creatures in their communities.
“By following [an animal’s] trail, you are going on a tour that the animal is leading you on. And it takes you to the different places that it finds important in the landscape,” he said. “The very beginning of tracking is figuring out, ‘Okay, who left this print?’ But by continuing that process, you actually learn a ton about the entire landscape and how it all fits together, from bedrock all the way up to birds, and everything in between.”
Wildlife Tracking Club meets at North Branch Nature Center in Montpelier at 10 a.m on Sundays through the end of March. It’s free and open to the public.