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Northeast Kingdom Section Hosts Sue Morse, Founder of Keeping
Track
By MICHAEL CHERNICK
When hiking, snowshoeing, skiing, or just simply wandering
in the deep and beautiful forests of the Kingdom, have you
ever come upon an animal track that simply mystified your
wildlife knowledge? Are you aware that our animal population
is more threatened than at any time in thousands of years?
Have you ever thought of assisting in efforts to combat this
significant problem of species depletion?
All of these inquiries were considered during Sue Morse's
lively slide and lecture presentation on the evening of December
7 at the Lyndon Institute Auditorium. After opening the program
with slides depicting a Vermont with far more open space in
the late 19th century, Sue lovingly described Vermont's current
forest wildlife from bobcats to moose as “our neighbors”
and urged that efforts be made now to encourage their survival.
As Sue bluntly stated: if no actions are taken, it is not
beyond reason to project the loss of 30 to 50 percent of Vermont's
animal species during the 21st century.
The naturalist guide founded Keeping Track, a non-profit
Vermont organization, with an urgent mission to preserve Vermont's
biodiversity for future generations. Keeping Track serves
both as a wilderness educator and a critical wildlife monitor,
establishing teams of trained volunteers in locales across
the state to observe animal habitat patterns.
The Keeping Track monitoring process is based on a thorough
knowledge of each species' unique footprints and scat. The
evening's younger attendees excitedly helped Sue identify
slides of these visual clues: while footprints demonstrate
travel and migration patterns, scat often reveals the animal's
sources of nourishment. The accumulation of this data from
across the state provides a broad overview regarding the varying
levels of success that different species are having in surviving.
Based on this information, Sue then advocates for measures
that may stem the threat to wildlife survival. Sue also brought
an extensive collection of animal skins and remains for display.
Very special thanks are extended to our section's president
and treasurer, Chris & Caroline Bechard, for the many
hours they devoted to assure its success and for their contribution
of a one year GMC membership raffle prize; and to anonymous
section members who generously contributed local merchant
raffle prizes.
Longer version of this story
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