Vermont
From invasive weeds to floods, the wood turtle is at risk in Vermont – VTDigger
While spiny softshell turtles are threatened in Vermont and spotted turtles are endangered, wood turtles could soon be threatened in the state due to land use change. That is why the state’s Fish & Wildlife Department is watching the species closely before more serious intervention is required.
The wood turtle, a medium-sized reptile native to Vermont, is known for the striking orange coloring on its neck and the inside of its legs, creating a unique, easily recognizable pattern. This pattern has also resulted in a growing demand for wild-caught turtles on the international black market.
But that’s not the only threat to these reptiles. Invasive species, like Japanese knotweed, are a major hazard, because they overrun sand and gravel bars where wood turtles would typically lay eggs. Moreover, repeated flooding in Vermont has caused the eggs to drown, and since the species has low reproductive rates, that can severely impact local populations.
Those threats have caused the department to identify wood turtles as a species of greatest conservation need in Vermont.
On Tuesday afternoon, two wildlife technicians waded through cool, bubbling streams and traversed muddy riverbanks in central Vermont to conduct one of the final wood turtle surveys of the season.
Kiley Briggs, the director of conservation at The Orianne Society, a nonprofit organization focused on protecting and restoring habitats for rare reptiles and amphibians, and Molly Parren, a turtle technician with the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department, stepped out of the pick-up truck to put on their boots and waders. Briggs retrieved his antenna and radio telemetry from the pick-up truck.
“With radio telemetry, (first) we attach a small transmitter onto the turtle,” Briggs said. “The transmitter sends out a radio signal, which basically beeps and then we use an antenna and a receiver to determine what direction that beep is coming from, and then we follow it until we find where the turtle is.”
Briggs is collecting baseline data — the preliminary data that allows biologists to determine where the hotspots are for turtles and their population in those places.
Vermont’s streams provide ample habitat for wood turtles, but their ability to nest and grow the population is becoming increasingly difficult, Briggs said. As invasive Japanese knotweed spreads, female turtles are forced to travel farther in search of suitable nesting sites, further jeopardizing the species’ survival.
“We’re just getting turtles that are 40-50 years old and none that are in their 20s. That tells us: ‘Here is a problem that needs to be addressed at this site,’” Briggs said.
Due to the longevity of wood turtles — some may surpass 80 years old, as well as their low reproductive rates and slow maturation, their populations are sensitive to any threat that kills adults or removes them from the population.
“They only start laying eggs at the age of 20, which results in taking a long time to replace a population,” Briggs said.
Wood turtles spend time in water and on land but prefer to nest in river valleys — which also happen to be the best places for farms and the easiest places to build roads, Briggs said. When wood turtles spend time on land, they can be killed by tractors or run over by cars.
“Cars are a problem for all of our turtles, but for wood turtles especially, and I’ve lost turtles that were run over by farming equipment,” Briggs said. In some cases, the loss of just one or two wood turtles a year due to human causes can lead to a significant population decline or extirpation, according to The Orianne Society.
But conserving wood turtle habitat can benefit landowners. Federal programs in the U.S. Farm Bill offer financial assistance to landowners and farmers who establish riparian buffers.
After walking along a stream, Briggs, wearing polarized glasses in knee-deep water and carrying the antenna, found a turtle. It was located under the river bank, too far to grab, so he walked farther. After crossing the stream another two times, more than an hour later, Briggs found a new wood turtle in the stream that he hadn’t marked yet.
Both Parren and Briggs were excited to have found a new, seemingly young turtle and started immediately logging its data, including weight and length, in an online form on Briggs’ phone.
“With wood turtles, with males, on the bottom of the shell, is concave, that’s a male trait. As with females, the bottom of the shell is flat,” Briggs said. “For the age, we can count growth rings on their shells, kind of like counting the rings of a tree.”
The newly discovered turtle was approximately 15-years old. Wood turtles grow for the first 15-20 years of life, but they can live up to 50-70 years. As they age, their shells gradually wear down and become smoother, a trait biologists use to estimate their age. This turtle’s lighter yellow tissue in the center of his shell indicated he is still growing, according to Briggs.
“It’s rare to see a new young turtle in this location,” he said, since the site is prone to intense summer floods. “The biggest concern now is, if we have frequent summer floods, (for) many, many years, it might be too much flooding for the population to survive.”
However, at one site where a dam causes frequent summer flooding, nearly all the turtles chose to lay their eggs in upland habitat, safely away from the river, Briggs said.
“I wonder if that was them responding,” Briggs said. “The turtles know that the site floods a lot, but that’s just my interpretation of their behavior there.”
PORTLAND, N.Y. (WCAX) – Police say the suspect in a Vermont murder was arrested in New York on Wednesday.
Terrence Biggs Jr., 25, of Michigan, was wanted in the deadly shooting of Austin Rodriguez, 26, of Rutland. It happened at a home on Summer Street on April 22.
Investigators say state police in New York arrested Biggs during a traffic stop in Portland, New York, that is in western New York, early Wednesday morning.
Biggs is charged with second-degree murder.
We still don’t know what authorities think led to the shooting or what the connection was between the two men.
Copyright 2025 WCAX. All rights reserved.
This story by Tim Calabro was first published in The Herald on Sept. 11, 2025.
Phill Gatenby rolled over the Moxley Bridge in Chelsea with a plastic skeleton riding shotgun in his Jeep, having made the long drive from Brattleboro for an early morning visit. Just a year ago, the Manchester, England native — by way of Florida — had never laid eyes on a covered bridge. Now he’s smitten.
Gatenby recalled seeing a covered bridge while driving around and thinking, “Oh, that’s interesting. I’d never seen a covered bridge in my life before. Never really heard of them,” he said. “A couple days later, I was going to Townshend, and all of a sudden it’s the Dummerston Bridge, and I’m just like, different size, different shape, different color.”
He stopped for directions and as he got lost on the back roads, he saw more and more covered bridges.
What started as casual curiosity has evolved into a quest: visit and film all 100 of Vermont’s authentic, historic covered bridges and share the journey on YouTube in a series titled “Vermont’s 100 Covered Bridges.”
So far he’s been to 50 and cranked out 37 videos of his visits — one every Sunday.
The most recent set of episodes has focused on the covered bridges of Tunbridge, Chelsea, and Randolph.
No two are quite alike. From king and queen trusses to parallelogram-shaped spans built on bends, like some on the First Branch, Gatenby has come to appreciate their variety and character.
And, stepping back from the bridges, the entire scene fascinates Gatenby.
“I mentioned this in the Kingsbury Bridge [episode]. I was at the bridge and I looked, and you’ve got the green mountains in the background and rolling hills. Then you’ve got the farm with the — is it the corn towers? — the river and a covered bridge. And it just says, like, you can’t get more Vermont!”
Gatenby’s process is rigorous. Each episode takes hours to shoot and edit. He gets different angles — sometimes driving through a bridge three or four times for the right shot. He’s waded into rivers, climbed steep banks, and once filmed inside a long-retired bridge that had been turned into a town shed.
“I try and do something that’s consistent,” he says. “So it’s, you know, the same start, the same middle. I go in the river. I’ve been in every single river so far.”
Gatenby credits community access TV stations — first Okemo Valley TV in Ludlow and now Brattleboro Community TV — for helping him build his skills and loaning him equipment.
“They literally brilliantly sat down and five, six, seven weeks went through how you do it,” he recalled.
Gatenby’s episodes go out via Okemo Valley TV’s YouTube channel and have regular times on the Okemo Valley and Brattleboro TV stations.
Form, Function, History
Vermont once had more than 600 covered bridges, Gatenby noted, but flooding and age have winnowed down the number greatly. Now, 100 remain and many towns hold clusters of them.
Tunbridge, for example, boasts five (Flint, Larkin, Mill, Cilley and Howe), with the Moxley bridge just over the Chelsea line. Randolph has three (Kingsbury, Gifford, and Braley or Johnson), all of them along the Second Branch.
Gatenby pointed out that three of the First Branch bridges were built by the same person, Arthur Adams. That’s a phenomenon common to covered bridges, Gatenby noted. Oftentimes the same person who had the skills to build a bridge would become the area’s go-to expert.
As Gatenby visits each of the 100 covered bridges spread throughout the state, he points out the history and construction techniques used in each, particularly the suspension methods unique to covered bridges. Most covered bridges in the White River Valley make use of modified king trusses, posts fitted into a triangle, which provide strength to the structure. Some, like the Moxley bridge, use both king trusses and square queen trusses around them.
Vermont’s covered bridges aren’t just structural relics, though — they’re cultural icons.
Some have graced the silver screen, including the Kingsbury Bridge in Randolph, used by Alfred Hitchcock as scenery in his 1955 film “The Trouble with Harry.”
“North by Northwest” has its dramatic crop duster strafing Cary Grant, Gatenby jokes in one of his episodes before cutting to a humble, scenic shot featuring the South Randolph bridge. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite as glamorous as that!”
The Chiselville bridge in Sunderland — Gatenby’s favorite so far — featured in “Baby Boom,” Diane Keaton’s 1987 film, and a year later, in the 1988 Chevy Chase and Madolyun Smith Osborne comedy, the Upper Falls bridge in Weathersfield made for a memorable gag (“I wouldn’t go that way if I were you”).
Another memorable stop is East Corinth, where the prop bridge used in “Beetlejuice” was fabricated out of whole cloth for the two weeks of filming. “Thousands of people go there every year,” he said, noting that the set-piece, used now as a shed at a ski area, doesn’t count among the authentic and historic bridges he films.
Nor, he said, does the Quechee Bridge. Though it is often mistaken for a traditional covered bridge, it’s just a facade.
“It’s concrete and steel. There’s very little wood,” Gatenby said. “You see the wood on the outside and the roof.”
Traditional bridges are completely made from wood and use a variety of truss systems to strengthen the span.
Place and Purpose
Gatenby moved to Vermont from Florida in July of last year. He now lives in Brattleboro with his wife and works as a shift supervisor at a home for adults with mental health issues.
“I’m a trained youth worker in England,” he said, having spent years working for the Prince’s Trust, a charity founded by King Charles. His day job might be demanding, but the early hours leave room for exploration.
“Three o’clock to 11:30 at night, so the daytime allows me to spend time in the TV studio,” he says. That flexibility has enabled him to squeeze in long road trips, sometimes filming six or seven bridges in a single day. “I’ve got to do minimum six, seven bridges each trip now,” he added. “To make it worth it.”
This Sunday, the show’s 38th episode will be released.
“I’m doing a little special 50th episode,” he said, noting the halfway point in the 100-bridge journey. “That’s where I’m bringing in stuff like the Quechee bridge. Because people said, ‘Oh, you didn’t go to the Quechee.’”
As the series nears its midpoint, Gatenby’s audience is slowly growing, both online and in the communities he visits.
“It’s just amazing … you know, and I’m just visiting them all,” he said, “places that I wouldn’t have got to see otherwise.”
With 50 more bridges to go, Vermont’s covered bridge guy still has miles to travel and stories to uncover.Gatenby’s series of covered bridge videos can be watched on Okemo Valley and Brattleboro public television stations or found on YouTube.
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