By Naomi Heindel, Executive Director of North Branch Nature Center in Montpelier, Vermont
In July of 2023 — and then again, a year to the day, in July 2024 — central Vermont’s rivers and streams filled to overflowing, and North Branch Nature Center (NBNC) flooded. While our buildings were high and dry through both floods, our meadow and forest were submerged to the 100-year flood mark each time, our trails and parking lot and farm road washed away, and our surrounding communities suffered devastating losses to homes and businesses.
It is clear that this was climate change, quite literally lapping at our doorstep. According to Vermont’s state climatologist in an interview with Vermont Public, New England now sees 55% more extreme rain events than it did in 1958.
A month after the July 2024 flood, NBNC Education Director Ken Benton and I facilitated a session at the ANCA Annual Summit about climate change and nature centers. While it was floods that forced this question at NBNC, listening to our colleagues we came to realize that between low snowpack, uncertain and extreme weather events, wildfire, changing phenology, and susceptible infrastructure, climate change is on the mind of staff at every nature center today. And it should be, not just because we’re seeing impacts today and will certainly see impacts into the future, but because we have a role to play in increasing our landscapes’ and our communities’ climate change resilience.
Climate Change’s Impacts on Nature Centers
Simply put, inconsistent weather makes outdoor programming challenging, and extreme weather makes outdoor programming dangerous. At the Summit, participants shared stories of extreme snow, hail, wind, rain, and drought, and the resulting tree fall, storm damage to conserved habitat, and trail washouts across their properties. NBNC was not the only nature center with flooding on our minds: one Midwest nature center had to stop doing public canoe trips after the river jumped one foot — while participants were on the water! At NBNC, we have also found that the river, which used to be a common spot for summer camp programming, is now too uncertain, with high flows and high erosion rates, making it no longer safe for us to use for much of the year.
Low snowpack is one aspect that is drastically changing our work at northern nature centers. Erik Keisler, Executive Director at Beaver Creek Reserve in Fall Creek, Wisconsin, shared that they are looking for entirely new winter programming to bring in visitors. In 2015, Beaver Creek invested $18,000 in new cross-country ski equipment. “Ten years later and we are lucky to be able to groom a trail for more than a week,” Erik reflected.
Erik has his staff looking to southern states to see what kind of programming they do in the winter with no snow, but shared that the financial impact is significant: “We have seen our first quarter have less visitation due to extreme variations in weather.”
At the Summit session, we heard about programming in mud, about walking programs instead of snowshoeing programs, about the need to invest in micro spikes instead of snowshoes, and about signature programs like tracking and maple sugaring that are disappearing.
Because phenology is changing rapidly, Summit attendees shared that they are losing connections to natural and human history. Program timing is changing, and traditional education themes and seasonal changes are not lining up any more. When our programs rely on flora, fauna, and natural processes on the landscape around us, this matters a lot. Scheduling is hard, community science becomes tricky to coordinate, and staff need to be ready to pivot programs quickly, sometimes even at a moment’s notice, as in the case with power outages, flash floods, and violent storms. As program staff feel their connection to the natural world shifting and changing beneath them, they need increasingly flexible curricula, and a bigger bag of programmatic tricks than usual.
Unsurprisingly, leaders at the Summit also brought up impacts on infrastructure, especially for the sustainable buildings that many nature centers have or are trying to move towards. How does storm damage, resilient winter infrastructure, severe weather changes, or things like sewer overflow fit into sustainable nature center operations? Safety concerns were also paramount, including unsafe traveling conditions for staff and participants, extreme heat, and air quality.
Perhaps the most sobering message came from California leaders: have your fire ecology curriculum ready, they told us. Lori Whalen, Assistant Director at the Environmental Nature Center (ENC) in Newport Beach, California reflected, “Just last year, we had to evacuate our ENC Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary due to a nearby fire. While our property was spared, the devastation caused by wildfires across California and beyond has been disastrous for both people and ecosystems.”
Nature Centers and Climate Resilience
Why does all of this matter? Here’s how Lori put it: “These extreme conditions don’t just impact the land — they also disrupt our ability to serve the community. When we have to close due to fires or severe weather, program participants miss out on valuable learning experiences, and the loss of revenue makes it even harder to maintain and restore these vital spaces.”
Amid our uncertainty and questions, there’s a critical role that nature centers can and should play in increasing our communities’ and landscapes’ climate resilience. We can put energy towards youth climate leadership. We can include climate change education in all our programs. We can build climate resilience into our strategic plans, facilities plans, and land management and stewardship plans.
Here at NBNC, the two floods reminded us of something essential: one of the most important roles we play is as a conserved, functional floodplain. Not only does our floodplain slow and absorb the water of the North Branch River and decrease the flooding in downstream Montpelier, but it also has public trails, meaning that community members can see, ask questions about, and learn in our floodplain. In NBNC’s new 2025-2029 Strategic Plan, we are planning all sorts of ways that we can highlight our role as a floodplain, be a demonstration site for thoughtful land management, maybe get rid of all our lawns in a really visible way, and increase community connection to the land as a climate solution in and of itself.
Part of the work we can do as nature centers is to not just teach climate science, but also to teach and create climate resilience. We can use our power as conveners to become community hubs, offering education around climate change responses and solutions. We can be places where folks build community support and hope around what can be a gloomy topic. At NBNC, we’ve done this through tree planting, and also through a climate change book club. Joining a nature center is a first step in the climate change movement — that is a message that we should be shouting from the rooftops and making sure our communities understand. We’ve long known that the type of nature connection we offer at nature centers is a need to have (not a nice to have) in education and mental well-being; now we need to see it as equally necessary for climate resilience.
In doing this important work, Summit participants made it clear that we’ll need to expand our communities and reach beyond the choir. We’ll need to form and strengthen partnerships and alliances so that our work is stronger and reaches farther. We’ll need strong nature center leaders to move the world of environmental education towards climate resilience, and we’ll need diverse voices to make sure that marginalized communities, often at higher risk in the climate crisis, are centered in this work. We need field building, logistical support, funding support, and social-emotional support for our staff.
As Lori said, “Every loss — whether from fire, wind, or drought — is a stark reminder of the urgent need for climate action. We remain committed to restoring and protecting these spaces, but addressing the root causes of climate change is critical for ensuring a more resilient future.”
After two floods, I can confidently say that nature centers need to be at the center of this, for the sake of the landscapes that we steward and for the sake of the communities we hold together. Those of us with water access can (when safe!) quite literally help people cool down on hot days; we can also help combat eco-anxiety through nature connection. But I think we can do a whole lot more. We should be thinking of ourselves, every single nature center, as critical components of a climate-resilient future.
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