March 10, 2011
By Mickey Friedman
Having grown up on city streets, I wouldn’t have known a vernal pool if I had fallen into one.
Today I’m writing about vernal pools because they are central to the battle about how best to clean toxic PCBs from the Housatonic River.
Vernal pools are “ephemeral fresh-water wetlands which do not hold water permanently and are free of breeding populations of fish.” (MA Fisheries and Wildlife). Fresh water pools formed by rain and snow during the autumn and winter, but dry at other times of the year. Because there are no predator fish, many important species are born in vernal pools. These species cannot live without these critically important vernal pools. (2011 Phase 4C Floodplain Property Vernal Pool Monitoring Summary, p.1: (http://www.epa.gov/region1/ge/thesite/floodplain/reports/phase4/501650.pdf)
We’re talking about invertebrates like fairy shrimp (don’t tell Rick Santorum), daphnia, fingernail clams, water striders, and caddishflies. These inveterbrates don’t have backbones and make up 97% of all animal species. Then there are amphibians like green frogs, wood frogs, and salamanders. These “indicator species” are easy to collect and tell us what’s in the water and how it is effecting animal life.















