“The federal one comes initially from the U.S. Forest Service, and then it goes through the University of Vermont, and then it comes to us, but funding for that has declined significantly over the last few years,” he said.

In 2015, the the atlas was getting about $20,000 via the Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative, which is a partnership between UVM, the state Agency of Natural Resources, and the federal Forest Service. Andrews said in 2019, funding from that source had declined to $8,500.

“Last year, we did our first GoFundMe public online fundraiser, and it really helped,” he said. “Previously it’s been all grants, but we moved in this direction last year and it worked well so we’re trying it again.”

Last year’s GoFundMe effort by the group raised $21,500.

“What I’m told is the second time around, you can’t expect to do quite as well, but our goal is another $20,000,” said Andrews.

This year’s fund page can be found at bit.ly/0224Atlas.

He said the atlas gathers all the data it can about reptile and amphibian sightings across the state and makes the information available on its website.

The atlas project has been going on since 1995. Prior to that, Andrews said, there was no baseline for information on the ranges for Vermont’s reptile and amphibian species.

“The reason we started doing this is there’s a group called the Reptile and Amphibian Scientific Advisory Group to the Endangered Species Committee, and so we provided the best interpretation of the data that we can for the Endangered Species Committee, that then goes to the Secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources,” he said.

The data gets used for everything from publishing field guides to informing the Endangered Species Committee on whether a species needs more protections or not. The Agency of Natural Resources also looks to it when considering Act 250 applications.

Steve Parren, Wildlife Diversity Program manager at the Department of Fish and Wildlife, said Monday that prior to the The Vermont Reptile and Amphibian Atlas’ work, there was no baseline to look at for reptile and amphibian data.

“You have to know what you have, to know what’s happening to them,” Parren said, adding that the atlas organization is a major source of information about where the state’s reptiles and amphibians can be found.

Part of the reason for the decline in funding is because the Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative is receiving less, and seeking to take a more regional look at things, said James Duncan, director of the cooperative.

Andrews said his group is working on two projects to digitally catalogue all of its paper records.

“Here in my office I’ve got notebooks full of records, and once I’m gone, no one is going to want those three-ring notebooks, everybody is going to be electronic,” he said. “We don’t know what form of electronic it’s going to be in, but it’s going to need to be some kind of electronic form. We’re scanning everything now and getting it all into PDFs and we’ve done 22 of the 40 species, so we need to finish that up and get all those original records scanned.”

The second project is going through all of the older records, what the atlas has gathered from newspaper and museum reports and other sources, and assigning GIS coordinates to them as best they can.

Andrews said it’s important to monitor these animals, as they’re indicators of an ecosystem’s health. Amphibians especially, since they have semi-permeable skin and absorb into their bloodstream whatever is in the water.