Become A Follow the Forest Community Scientist!
wildlife Linkage Assessment Program
Assess wildlife linkages near you! We are enlisting the help of local volunteers and students to get a better sense of where wildlife is moving between core forests. Check out our map of potential linkages and complete an assessment today!
wILDLIFE Sightings
We are collecting your roadkill and roadside wildlife observations throughout the corridor, including eastern New York, western Connecticut, western Massachusetts, and all of Vermont. See roadkill or roadside wildlife? Submit your observations today!
Follow the Forest works to protect and connect core forests, creating a climate-resilient wildlife corridor from the Hudson Valley to Canada. A key part of our vision is maintaining the habitat connectivity that wildlife rely on to migrate seasonally, maintain genetic diversity, adapt to climate change, and access essential resources like food, water, and shelter.
This is an ambitious vision and one we cannot achieve alone. Community members across the Follow the Forest landscape hold invaluable local knowledge. To incorporate this knowledge and insight into our work, we created two community science programs. The data collected through these efforts guide conservation and restoration work and are essential for understanding connectivity in your community: Where are animals moving within our landscape? How are they navigating roadways? What barriers do they face as they travel from core forest to core forest?
Becoming a Follow the Forest Community Scientist is easy! You don’t need to be a biologist or have prior experience to participate. All we ask is that you have an interest in wildlife and the environment, curiosity, and a willingness to think critically and creatively about habitat connectivity and wildlife movement across the landscape.
“We had a great volunteer day assessing wildlife habitat linkages at Flanders. Follow the Forest is an important tool that can help us set conservation priorities and achieve those goals by building a groundswell of support around protecting this great corridor through local efforts.”
– Anne, volunteer at Flanders Nature Center