Every three years, the Harris Center partners with an all-star lineup of local colleges,
universities, and non-profit organizations to host the Monadnock Region Natural History
Conference or MRNHC – a one-day gathering of nature lovers, with a focus on our local
landscape.
The goal is to highlight the incredible natural history of the Monadnock Region and to showcase the breadth of study and stewardship happening right in our own backyards, so that we can better understand, appreciate, and protect nature close to home.
This year’s conference will be held Saturday, Nov. 15, from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Keene State College and will include 22 short talks, eight poster presentations, a keynote, a pop-up natural history bookstore and at least one table full of caterpillars.
Our presenters include forest ecologists, wildlife biologists, historians, birders, foresters, professors, students, trail cam gurus, community scientists, and even a butterfly wrangler or two.
It is impossible to summarize the program in one short column, but as an
enticement to attend – and in celebration of the extraordinary research happening in our quiet corner of the state – I offer a sneak preview of some of MRNHC 2025’s presentations.
The day will kick off with a keynote by nature cartoonist Rosemary Mosco, who will tell a few funny stories from the creation of her newest book, “The Birding Dictionary,” a guide for people who find themselves obsessed, against all logic and reason, with birds. Rosemary’s qualifications include judging a bird tattoo contest (twice) and co-founding a week celebrating invertebrate butts, so even though she doesn’t hail from the Monadnock Region, she ought to feel right at home here.
From there, we’ll move into concurrent sessions on mammal monitoring and humans and nature, with talk titles ranging from “Raphael Pumpelly as Indiana Jones: Geology, Monadnock, and the Hidden History Beneath our Feet” by Keene writer and filmmaker Matthew Myer Boulton to “Listening to Moose: Monitoring Moose Presence with Acoustic Recorders” by University of New Hampshire graduate student and former snow leopard researcher Sandesh Lamichhane.
The morning session also includes a presentation on an astounding use of new technology for monitoring forest health, detecting invasive species, and even identifying the presence of far-ranging mammals in large tracts of forest: environmental DNA (eDNA) collected from spiderwebs. To be clear, we are not talking about analyzing spider DNA, or even the DNA of spider prey, but rather airborne DNA from other species entirely that has found its way into spiderwebs, where it can be used to monitor a wide variety of forest life. In a 2024 study published in iScience, Australian researchers successfully detected 61 different vertebrate species by sequencing eDNA from spiderwebs up to 30 miles away. (Cleverly, they sampled in the vicinity of the Perth Zoo, so they could isolate the DNA of the exotic species that lived there to evaluate detection distance without running the risk of genetic interference by native wildlife.) Now, Dr. Jeffrey Miller of UNH is piloting this technique with spiderwebs collected at the Surry Mountain Preserve – and inviting students into the process.
Once you pick your jaw up off the floor, it’ll be time for a quick lunch break, then on to the
poster session and tabling by conference partners (the Harris Center, Antioch University New England, UNH Extension, Keene State College, Franklin Pierce University, the Forest Society, and the Historical Society of Cheshire County), conference sponsors (The Nature Conservancy, Moosewood Ecological, the Monadnock Conservancy, Northern Woodlands, and Northeast Conservation Services), and others. Make sure to stop by the Caterpillar Lab table for your daily invertebrate fix.
Poster presentations will run the gamut from a study of wood turtle habitat use to an
examination of Ceremonial Stone Landscapes — stacked stone structures found throughout
New England — as living bridges connecting past and future, ecology and culture, and
Indigenous and colonial experiences.
Particularly noteworthy is the first-ever presentation by high school students in the
conference’s history, and it’s a good one: Sarah Mundorff, Hayden Anderson, Kodai Goodrow, and their classmates at the Dublin School turned to fiber arts as a way of conveying climate change data, creating a weaving that illustrates the change in Keene’s average monthly low temperatures from 1900 through 2025. The weaving will be on display, along with a student-made quilt map depicting global temperature change since 1951 and a poster explaining the project.
Coffee next – there will be good coffee! – and then it’s on to the afternoon tracks on migration, breeding birds, ecosystem management, and aquatic ecology. These sessions cover a wide range of time scales, from stream restoration and bird banding projects launched in the last few years to limnological studies spanning centuries.
Bird nerds will appreciate a slate of talks by NH Audubon biologists, including Dr. Pamela Hunt’s presentation on a new Wood Thrush migration study, which uses cutting-edge nanotag technology to track the movements of this species in decline. One Wood Thrush, first tagged on its breeding grounds in Hinsdale in the summer of 2024, traveled to the Yucatan Peninsula and onward to Costa Rica last fall, a straight-line migration distance of more than 2,600 miles.
Longtime raptor biologist Chris Martin will also discuss the Bald Eagle’s recovery in the
Monadnock Region from 1998 through today, a career-long effort that was helped along by
many local volunteers. (I’m told Chris will name names.)
For the silviculturally inclined, Laura Green from the Yale School of the Environment will
attempt to describe 100 years of forest research and management at the Yale-Toumey Forest, which encompasses 1,930 acres in Keene and Swanzey, in just 20 minutes. That’s five years and 96 acres per minute, not including time for questions.
Digging even deeper (literally), Dr. Lisa Doner of Plymouth State University will share what
sediment cores have revealed about land use and climate change at Juggernaut and Norway
Ponds in Hancock since before it was Hancock.
If you haven’t gotten your fill by the time the curtain closes on Saturday, the conference weekend will wrap up with two Sunday outings, optional but included with your registration fee: a morning birding trip offered by the Monadnock Bird and Nature Club, and an afternoon fungi foray with the Monadnock Mushroom Club.
Registration costs $30 per person ($10 for students), and includes breakfast, coffee and admission to all presentations, guaranteed to inform and delight. Scholarships are available. To learn more and register, visit tinyurl.com/MonadnockNaturalHistory.
Brett Amy Thelen is Science Director at the Harris Center for Conservation Education.