WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-Flooding stresses wildlife

It has been one of the wettest springs on record, which has meant flooding of rivers, streams and lakes. It's driven residents from the shores, both human and animal. Naturalist Charlie Browne from the Fairbanks Museum tells us wildlife from the shores of rivers and streams will fare better than those along the shores of Lake Champlain.

Along the shores of this river in Huntington, you can still see the sediment left behind from the flooding earlier.

"The animals and plants that live along the rivers are accustomed to annual flooding of the rivers, so they are probably not affected, their timing for nesting and bearing young is such that they probably won't be affected by the floodwaters in the rivers."

Lake Champlain though, tends to go up more slowly and it tends to come down a lot more slowly so we could be seeing flooding on Lake Champlain for weeks to come. That will make a huge difference for some of the animals that depend on the lakeshore for breeding.

" Particularly things like turtles, which nest in sand bars and mud banks close to the water. Also Canada geese, which nest in the grassy meadows right above the water, and those are all flooded right now and probably will be for another month. So those things may miss a breeding season this year."

"What about mammals?"

"Well, we have muskrats and mink, and otter that use the shoreline, and muskrats particularly, because they build those lodges in which they raise their young, and if the water in those backwaters has risen with the lake, they may be flooded out entirely. Mink and otter use the routes and gravel bars along the edge of the lake for their breeding dens and those are definitely underwater and probably for another month. That could affect their breeding success

"If they have a bad year this year, is that going to effect their population as a whole?"

"Probably not, as long as there's not a sequence of years in which there's substantial flooding of the lake, those animals probably can recover next year."

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