Maine lawmakers have sent a bill to Gov. Janet Mills to bolster protections for seasonal wetlands that provide critical habitat for imperiled amphibians, insects, turtles and other wildlife. The bill ...

Vernal pools are seasonal bodies of water that provide critical breeding habitat for amphibians and insects. These pools cycle through wet, flowering, and dry phases, supporting a diverse range of ...

This is an essential quality of a vernal pool. Fish can’t survive a dry-out, which means that the larvae of frogs, salamanders, all sorts of insects, and more, get a better chance to grow up.

They’re food for insect larvae which then become food for birds and amphibians such as frogs and salamanders. Naturalist Beth Weiler shines a light into a vernal pool to look for salamanders and ...

Vernal pools (vernal meaning spring ... re teeming with a variety of wildlife—more than 550 species of aquatic insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals are drawn to these ephemeral ...

But there are not only predatory animal and insect larvae. Among the many unique plants that thrive in vernal pools is another carnivore. [BILL MCAVOY] Floating here in the water, let's see if I ...

What we don’t see is that it has lost its vernal pools and ponds, this important component of the landscape.” Once the pond is gone, the amphibians and insects, and the creatures that feed on ...

making individual vernal pools irreplaceable. The diversity of wildlife that call these pools home include frogs, salamanders, fairy shrimp, beetles and other bugs. But they also play a vital role ...

The guided hike will offer the opportunity to observe unique species found in seasonal woodland pools, known as “vernal ponds ... and giant water bugs. The guided hike will start at ...

When winter snow melts and spring rain begins, vernal pools appear on the landscape. These ephemeral wetlands form in depressions in forests or ridgelines and offer essential breeding habitat to ...

For this reason, salamanders, frogs and insects can take advantage of their safety from predatory fish. There are three phases of the vernal pool cycle: wet, flowering and dry. The wet phase ...