While Amherst, Massachusetts is most known for its abundance of colleges and the more than twenty thousand undergraduate students that call it home, the outskirts are quiet and quaint. Driving around, it feels like your average New England town, but for one day a year, the tiny creatures risk life and limb to utilize the roads in this suburbanite town turn Amherst into a town of ecological note.

This species isn’t endangered, but they are in danger.

Scientifically known as Ambystoma maculatum, spotted salamanders crawl out of the earth, emerging from their winter burrows into the brisk rainy spring to do what every creature must to persist: breed. Hundreds of these bright yellow spotted amphibians migrate from their homes to vernal pools – shallow temporary pools of water that exist on during wetter months like winter and spring. The problem? This vital trek spans across a frequented local road.

Stepping up since the 1980s, every April citizen scientists have gathered year after year to form bucket brigades to help them make their dangerous trek. And, in 1987, the British Fauna and Floral Preservation Society and the German drainage company, and ACO Polymer, funded the construction of two underpasses to make the salamanders’ pilgrimage safer.

Funnels to Tunnels

Salamanders are funneled to the underpasses by a series of short “drift” fences that are mended each year prior to their journey. These tunnels which are designed with slotted tops to make sure they have the humidity they need to safely travel and overseen by the Hitchcock Center for the Environment. Animal crossings like this have been used for countless wildlife in countless cities and countries. They’re a growing tool in conservation.

My First “Big Night”

Now, almost 30 years later, while hundreds use the tunnels, citizen scientists line up to assist the stragglers. This year, armed with a headlamp and my chosen family, I participated in my first salamander migration, known by locals as the “Big Night.”

I brought my energetic three-year-old Elliott nephew who summarized the night best.

“Where here to find our friends before the cars make them go SQUISH and give them boo boos! They’re going to have babies like baby Quinn!” he said, referring to his mother, and my dear friend, who’s expecting (fittingly, the little one’s expected on Earth Day).

While some were felt the fate of tire, we were able to assist about a dozen salamanders and a handful of frogs who also sought the vernal ponds. Over thirty others walked the road with us, asking commuters to slow down as they scooped various slimy friends, bringing them to the other side. It was an incredible evening. Henry Street was flooded once again with reflective vests and flashlights during this informal organizing.  

It’s left me reflecting on how we as a society engage our youth. In the two weeks that have followed Big Night, Elliott has bragged to anyone who would listen about how he’s a salmand super hero (maybe by next year he’ll master all the syllables). His day care friends are amazed, and several parents have asked about how to get involved. To every, “How was your weekend,” I was able to talk about conservation. Many have found it incredible, asking where they can find out more and get involved. While large corporations impact our climate far more negatively and far more severely than any individual action, there is something to be said about the ripple affect of citizen science and a culture of conservation. Ultimately, a serious culture shift is what we need to save our planet. Large consumer and cultural trends away from single use plastics and extensive waste production and towards living a more life deliberately in partnership with nature can help fundamentally move the needle. While an intrinsic environmental consciousness woven throughout all sectors of society is ideal, short of that, cultural shifts can pressure capitalistic entities to move towards reductions in their carbon footprint and waste output. A world where companies ACO Polymer donate to underpasses so we can mitigate some of human’s most harmful impacts on nature.

Agency: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Program: US Fish & Wildlife Service

Location: Eastern Massachusetts National Wildlife Refuge Complex

A Long-Founded Love of the Shore

With my dad working days as an electrician and my mom taking the night shift as a custodian, my family never had much. Still, after retirement, my grandmother bought a camper. We spent weeks on the shores of Cape Cod. Unlike those who would rent a cottage for a week, being there all summer gave us a different lens. We’d visit the Sandwich Glass Museum and learn of Sandwich’s long history as a major glass producer (an honor earned by their excess of trees that fueled the ovens and pure sand from the Berkshires of Massachusetts). We’d eagerly feed the fish at local hatcheries and built hard earned callus as we climbed barefoot down rock jetties or the Canal’s rocky shores. I learned how to sex crabs at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

And while college brought me to Queens, NY, I became landlocked again when I returned my roots in Western, MA. While I was always nostalgic for the ocean, I had resigned myself to accepting that it would only feature in my life sporadically as infrequent and short weekend trips.

From Bulk Data to Marketing Analytics

As a trans person, I was socialized as a woman. While in many subjects I excelled, I didn’t feel particularly encouraged to pursue STEM. I leaned into the soft sciences with a major in clinical psychology. And sure, I flirted with more traditional STEM research. I spent 4 years as a lab manager for a neurology lab and endless hours crunching numbers. As many with a BA in psychology, graduated with limited options in my field and pivoted to data management – I skill I acquired after countless hours in the lab removing artifacts from EEG data. Day in and day out, I did bulk data processing for an international nonprofit. With 2 years of a job that never changed, I sought creative hobbies to round out my time. It wasn’t long before I found a passion in photography.

In 2015, I photographed my first wedding. Then my second one. Over time I shot more and more weddings and, in the quest to market myself, I studied more and more about digital marketing, UX, and marketing analytics.

In 2018, during the day I worked full time in my first web analytics job and at night I pursued an MA in marketing analytics. As I advanced on my career, I found myself wanting to market something that made me excited.

It was then I saw HAF’s job listing for an Advanced Communications Fellow for the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument – a biodiverse area of protected waters roughly the side of CT just over 100 miles off the coast of Cape Cod.

Making the Link

There is no silver bullet solution to the environmental threats that the Monument faces.

Any management strategy cannot sustainably tackle every facet required for such a holistic, multifaceted approach, but it can't be understated how vital it is to use outreach to shift public behaviors towards more eco-concious ones are. While we culturally silo science from politics, climate change is inherently contentious because it tackles the fundamental question of how we want to live as a society and a world. The impacts of inaction threaten nearly every sector of our lives. That's why human dynamics are a large part of wildlife management.

Turning towards evidence-based practices, I rethought what I knew about communicating the importance of our marine ecosystems.

For example, scientific literacy has been found to polarize people’s views on climate change, not unite them behind a cause. Many think that lack of facts fosters empathy about our changing client. This belief been the foundation that countless marketing campaigns are built upon. Yet, a 2012 study compared scientific literacy and climate attitudes and found that public divide over climate change is more strongly rooted in individuals wanting to hold beliefs aligned with the beliefs of those they have close ties with. The driving community beliefs that predicted how concerned respondents were with climate change were whether they related to the world in a community-focused (Egalitarian Communitarians) or individualistic (Hierarchical Individualists) way. The researchers found that those with the highest degrees of science literacy and technical reasoning capacity were not the most concerned about climate change. Rather, they were the ones among whom cultural polarization was greatest, perhaps because they were able to selectively pick evidence that secured their cultural worldview and personal interests. 

So if scientific literacy isn’t driving climate action, what will? For the ocean, the answer is clear: emotions.

Research done by Goodwin Simon Strategic Research, Wonder: Strategies for Good, and The David and Lucile Packard Foundation Early audited digital public-facing materials and messaging on the websites of ten prominent ocean-focused organizations.

Ocean conservation messaging has been devoid of human actors, thus implying destruction by a series of abstract processes; and it is largely devoid of human emotion. The absence of humans from marketing deprives us of personal narrative which research has shown to play an important role in shaping opinion.

More than scientific literacy, people, as a result of a complex of psychological mechanisms, tend to form perceptions of societal risks that cohere with values characteristic of groups with which they identify. They make choices based on their emotions, lived experiences, identity, beliefs, and values.

In my role, I’ve researched extensively for how formative experiences at the shore directly correlate with donations, action, and policy efforts. I’ve spent weeks pouring over endless peer review that have illustrated how my days at the shore have directly engendered my passion so I can dedicate my life towards facilitating the same experience for others.

Agency: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Program:

Location: Eastern Massachusetts National Wildlife Refuge Complex

Citizen science is a community-based approach to science that pulls in the public. It’s been cited as early as the mid-1800s when German migrant Ferdinand Mueller enlisted the Australian public to aid in plant collection so he could create a robust catalogue of Australian flora.

Public Data at its Worst

Perhaps one of the most known examples was when hundreds of thousands of well-intentioned Reddit users played detective as they gathered countless images and video in the aftermath of the 2013 Boston Marathon, making it America’s most crowdsourced terror investigation. Users were able to even secure vital images not yet made available to the FBI. Yet, their efforts led to unregulated witch hunts which were in turn amplified by the media and ultimately led to the wrongful naming of a missing Brown student.

Notable Citizen Scientists and Discoveries

We’ve seen citizen science at its best and worst. It happens both on large international scales and by even single individuals motivated by a curiosity so strong that it’s unrestricted by status. As a medical school dropout who pursued studying flora and fauna as an amateur, Charles Darwin has long been a favorited poster child of the community.

The community has continued to grow as technology has made it more accessible. It allows people to engage with their passions and explore their natural environment. They connect with a community and feel like they’re making a difference.

While there have always existed concerns about the accuracy of information gathered from untrained scientists, the contributions of the public have been invaluable. From the Wollemi Pine (Wollemia nobilis) to the giant Gippsland earthworm, citizen scientists have discovered new species of flora and fauna and rediscovered those previously thought to be either extinct or prehistoric. With the sensor technology becoming cheaper, photo documentation becoming increasingly accessible, and geotags at the tip of our fingers, the risk of human error seems more greatly mitigated. Science is becoming more transparent, more participatory, and more accessible.

A Cultural Movement

The City Nature Challenge started as a west coast event and has now become an international, friendly competition spread over a four-day annual blitz where participants try to gather as many documentations of different species as possible. It showcases what can be accomplished when we all work toward a common goal. In 2021, 419 cities participated across 44 countries, with over 50,000 people coming together to document over 45,000 species, some of which were rare and endangered.

In my fellowship, as I work to create a communication plan that shares the wonders and importance of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, the importance of citizen science can’t be understated.

Horseshoe crabs which have been a cornerstone of medical research, including COVID treatment, find themselves at the center of Project Limulus. Project Limulus trains citizens on tagging and tracking the migrations of horseshoe crabs off the coast of Rhode Island. This project has existed for over a decade and has given valuable insights into their migration patterns, breeding grounds, and life spans.

Building our connection with nature through citizen science is one of the strongest, most meaningful things we can do to bolster community and understanding. While such activities are commonplace with birders who teach each other calls and share bird spottings, encouraging a similar culture of inquisition in marine conservation can be one of the ways we gain insights into the unknown mysteries of our waters.

Agency: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Program:

Location: Eastern Massachusetts National Wildlife Refuge Complex

Sage (they/them) is a trans digital strategist and content creator and first-generation college student. Published in countless local publications, they’ve long worked as a professional photographer in a style that captures raw human connection with heavy nods to the crisp, wide angle, and naturally lit styles of street photography. They’ve spent their career focusing on candor over inauthentic performance, photographing diverse populations of various vocations including punks, artists, crafters, and justice advocates.

In tandem with photography, Sage hold a Masters in Digital Marketing and Analytics from Emerson College. They’re interested in the intersection of best practices and creative box breaking. They have a soft spot for brutalist web design, unique UX, tailoring long tail conversions to niche audiences, and data guided improvements. Sage works full time as a web strategist and has a healthy client list of local businesses as freelance clients.