Category Archive

We often lament that the carefree days of exploring outdoors with only a dinner bell to call you home are unfamiliar to today’s children. But early learning about the natural world is important.

Project partners from three different organizations wander across fields of goldenrod and burnweed under a perfect September sky. From a boardwalk just a few inches above the wetland soils we inspect alders and cattails, wool grass and smartweed.

In summer 2021, my neighbor sent me a text with a picture of an unusual bird wading in the marsh below his deck. You had to take note, as there are just no big pink birds local to Connecticut. Indeed, that bird—a roseate spoonbill—is typically a resident of Florida and tropics further south. Likely sent off course from a storm that blew it up the coast, it is somehow appropriate to elicit that recollection in a conversation about how our climate is changing in New England.

The adage “When it rains, it pours” is one that is becoming all too familiar and challenging for the future health of our local waterways.

I n November 2024, I sat down with Andrew French, Refuge Manager of the Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge and the Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge and longtime employee of the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), to discuss his career and perspectives on the Connecticut River watershed.