2024-2025 Program Information
Meet your Program Coordinator
Program coordinators act as the core organizer of their local VMN program. They maintain contact with VMN participants and help organize volunteer projects. They attend field trainings for free and also receive a stipend for the year.
Erin O’Neill is the program coordinator for the Mad River Valley (MRV) and a graduate of the Vermont Master Naturalist MRV Program (2023-24).
Erin lives in Waterbury due to the area’s unparalleled access to the outdoors. She is excited about the MRV Program because she believes that understanding and engaging with the place you call home is essential for cultivating a meaningful relationship with the Earth.
Erin’s passion for the outdoors began in her hometown in Northeast Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains. She spent time exploring the Delaware River Valley, Catskills, and Adirondacks with her family- her boundless energy for trails and nature has been a constant throughout her life.
Her love for nature and outdoor recreation led her to Vermont, where she earned her B.S. in Plant Ecology and Evolution from the University of Vermont (UVM). At UVM, Erin engaged in research and studied plant taxonomy both in the Champlain Valley and abroad in Costa Rica. She furthered her academic journey with an M.S. in Biology, focusing on the intricate interactions between plants, fungi, and pollinators.
Currently, Erin serves as a Biology Teaching Lab Coordinator at UVM, where she educates undergraduate students in ecology and evolution and supports graduate students in their teaching goals. To stay connected with the younger community, she works as a children’s ski instructor each winter and runs a small business offering ecology programs for kids.
In her free time, Erin enjoys long-distance running, being in the mountains, and swimming in cold water. She is thrilled to be part of the Vermont Master Naturalist community where people love to be outside and learn about the land.
Banner photo of the Vermont Master Naturalist Mad River Valley participants at Wu Ledges by Curt Lindberg.
2023-2024 Program Information
Explore this program year
Vermont Master Naturalist is coming back to the Mad River watershed with support from the Stark Mountain Foundation in the fall of 2023!
The Mad River Valley is a watershed with a rich cultural heritage and habitat ranging from montane forests to dry oak hilltops & spruce swamps. Vermont Master Naturalist “classrooms” will be special locations in the Valley with stories to tell, like wildlife corridors, woodlands of wildflowers, stone walls and cellar holes, and the ever-meandering banks of the Mad River.
During a series of 5 day-long field trips, fifteen participants will spend time in specially chosen sites across the Valley reviewing layers of the landscape, like geology, soils, hydrology, plants and animals (natural communities), as well as signs of processes like human land use history, river geomorphology, wind, or fire that have shaped the Valley. VMN faculty will help participants learn to “read” these layers and tell stories of its natural and cultural history. Participants will also consider the importance of biodiversity in functioning ecosystems as advanced by famed biologist E. O. Wilson and the Half-Earth Project.
To practice their new skills and as a way of giving back to the community, teams of participants will work on local conservation education and stewardship projects.
For information and an application contact Alexa Lewis, VMN Coordinator for the Mad River Valley: alexajlewis@gmail.com
Meet your Program Coordinator
Program coordinators act as the core organizer of their local VMN program. They maintain contact with VMN participants and help organize volunteer projects. They attend field trainings for free and also receive a stipend for the year.
Alexia Lewis is the program coordinator for the Mad River Valley.
2020-2021 Program Information
Explore this program year
Vermont Alliance for Half-Earth, Warren Conservation Commission, Waitsfield Conservation Commission, Fayston Conservation Commission and Mad River Path collaborated with VMN to bring the program to the Valley for the first time in 2020.
Meet your Program Coordinator
Program coordinators act as the core organizer of their local VMN program. They maintain contact with VMN participants and help organize volunteer projects. They attend field trainings for free and also receive a stipend for the year.
Curt Lindberg is the program coordinator for the Mad River Valley. Curt is a relatively new resident of Vermont. He lives in Waitsfield with his wife Claire in a new passive certified house built by his son. His interest in nature and its protection stems from time outdoors and his doctoral study of complex systems. Since moving to the state, he’s devoted himself to learning about unique features of nature in Vermont, connecting with naturalists and leaders of conservation organizations and exploring the land. As a result of an amazingly rich learning experience in the Vermont Master Naturalist Upper Winooski Watershed Program, he offered to help bring VMN to the Mad River Valley. His other nature related priority is introducing E. O. Wilson’s Half-Earth Project to the state and facilitating the creation and activities of the Vermont Alliance for Half-Earth.
A nature highlight from Fall 2020 was a Saw-whet Owl banding experience at North Branch Nature Center shared with his granddaughter Maddie, and daughter Kristen. After the event Maddie declared she wanted to be a naturalist!
Vermont Master Naturalist Program 