The Myth of Climate Havens
Select cities dubbed 鈥榗limate havens鈥欌�攆rom Burlington, Vermont, to Asheville, North Carolina鈥攕eemed safe from the wrath of climate change. Then came the floods.
- By Jessica Snyder Sachs
- Conservation
- Jun 25, 2025
On July 11, 2023, the streets of Vermont’s capital, Montpelier (above, photo by Bryan Pfeiffer), sat under 4 feet of water after 3 to 9 inches of rain had fallen across the state in just 48 hours. Burlington, Vermont (below), also was impacted, including many of the area’s small family farms, where fields flooded or ripped into gullies.
JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT on July 10, 2023, we watched our old wooden dock begin to bob in the rising water. In drenching rain, my husband slogged through waist-deep water to tie our boats to trees—the canoe, a kayak and the small pontoon boat we used to ferry supplies to our cabin on northeastern Vermont’s Ricker Pond. There would be no saving my vegetable garden.
For two weeks, record-warm waters of the North Atlantic had sent a succession of “atmospheric rivers” that fell as rain when they hit the spine of Vermont’s Green Mountains. The night of July 10, two storms collided and stalled.
It would be three days before the rain and flooding ebbed enough that my husband and I could walk the trail to our car a half mile away. Driving into town, we saw far greater damage: Highways buckled where the Wells River had exploded its banks and gouged out the underlying roadbed. Farm fields flooded or ripped into gullies.
We found out that 3 to 9 inches of rain had fallen across Vermont in just 48 hours—more than is typical for an entire month. Compounding the impact of this epic rainfall was the steepness of the state’s river valleys that have provided irrigation, transportation and hydropower to people for thousands of years. Vermont’s capital, Montpelier, sat under 4 feet of water. Flash flooding had killed two people—a hiker swept off the Appalachian Trail and a resident trapped in a flooded basement.
In all, the Great Vermont Flood of 2023 caused an estimated $300 million in damage, including . More than 75 percent of the flooded farms were small family operations, and more than 25 percent were organic, a reflection of the state’s unique fusion of traditional and environmentally progressive farming.
Many dubbed the two-day deluge a freak “100-year storm,” until one year later—to the day—the remnants of Hurricane Beryl delivered a cataclysmic repeat.
Ironically, my husband and I had come to Vermont several years earlier after giving up our remote cabin in British Columbia. We did so, in part, because of the growing threat of western wildfires. (We’d already narrowly escaped one wildfire so fierce it obliterated the home where we were staying.) By contrast, Vermont had a reputation as a relative climate change haven. It’s far from the coast in one of the coolest regions of the United States. The Vermont gardeners I knew actually smiled at the prospect of global warming lengthening the state’s infamously short growing season.
Many academics seemed to agree with this rosy view. A 2020 analysis by identified the 10 U.S. counties least likely to be harmed by climate change. Six of them were in Vermont. Two years later, Tulane University sustainable real estate professor Jesse Keenan named Burlington—Vermont’s largest city—as one of in the United States. (Anna Marandi, formerly of the National League of Cities, added two additional cities—Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Orlando, Florida—to the list; see map, below.) Such reports inspired a flurry of media stories that described “climate migrants” fleeing wildfires, rising seas or intolerable heat, some of them relocating to these so-called safe havens.
Yet today Vermont has become a case study of climate disaster beyond the regions long recognized as threatened by global warming. Nor is the state alone in busting the myth of climate refuge. Two months after Vermont’s 2024 ruinous flood, Hurricane Helene took an unexpected left turn and devastated another one of Keenan’s top climate havens—Asheville, North Carolina. Says , chief scientist emeritus of the National Wildlife Federation and lead author of the 2024 report Innovation in Climate Adaptation, “No place is truly safe in a time of rapid climate change.”
In 2022, Tulane University professor Jesse Keenan identified 10 U.S. cities, mostly in the Northeast, as urban climate havens likely to be spared the worst impacts of climate change. Two more cities were added by Anna Marandi, formerly of the National League of Cities (see all 12, below). Within the following two years, however, climate change-fueled flooding had impacted two of these so-called havens, including Asheville, North Carolina (above).
Growing odds of weather extremes
Exactly what role did climate change play in powering Vermont’s Great Floods of 2023 and 2024? It clearly contributed to their likelihood, says Vermont State Climatologist . “As our climate continues to change and heavier rainfall events occur, the chance or likelihood of a rainfall event that used to have a 1 in 100 probability is now more like 1 in 60,” she says.
What may be the new normal has alarmed some state conservationists. “We knew that flood risk was one of the experiences we’d encounter with climate change,” says , executive director of the (VNRC), an NWF affiliate. “But knowing something intellectually and being part of a climate disaster is so different.”
Vermont’s wildlife managers have no tally of the number of animals killed or acres of habitat destroyed by the extreme rain and floods of the past two years. “Most species can bounce back from short periods of extremes,” Stein says. “But each pulse places additional stress on species and, coupled with more-gradual climate shifts, can lead to serious declines.”
One species clearly impacted by the floods was the common loon. Vermont is home to more than 100 breeding pairs of these beloved birds, up from just seven pairs in 1983—thanks largely to efforts coordinated by the (VCE). Those population gains are now threatened by extreme rainfall and flooding, says VCE loon biologist . Loons build their nests on the brushy shoreline of lakes and ponds, he explains, and Vermont’s 2023 flood swamped at least nine active nests. The 2024 storm wiped out 12. “If either flood had occurred three weeks earlier, it would have flooded 40 nests or more,” Hanson adds.
Extreme rains also send turbulent runoff into lakes and ponds, churning up sediment and making it difficult for loons to see and catch fish for themselves and their young. On Ricker Pond, we witnessed a heartbreaking example after the 2023 flood. Once clear, the pond’s waters remained brown and murky for months, and the resident loon pair stopped feeding their formerly plump and active chick. The chick grew listless, lost weight and twice drifted over the pond’s dam spillway. Hanson rescued the chick from below the dam both times before taking it to a rehabilitation center. The chick was one of several rescued in the past few years, and Hanson suspects the culprit is decreased water clarity caused by excessive runoff.
State biologists likewise suspect that extreme rains of the past two summers have harmed Vermont’s large and diverse population of breeding songbirds. “We had multiple heavy, prolonged periods of rain during the heart of nesting season,” says Jillian Kilborn, a bird biologist. “Such weather makes it hard for the parents to keep their young warm and find enough insects to feed them.”
Wetter and warmer summers also foster bird diseases such as and . “We’re particularly worried about the spread of these infections among waterfowl and other birds that congregate in close proximity to each other,” Kilborn says. New England’s forests “still hold the highest diversity of breeding songbirds in the country,” she adds. “But we’re seeing concerning declines we suspect are linked to climate change,” including falling populations of insect-dependent species such as bobolinks, eastern meadowlarks, alder flycatchers, tree swallows, eastern phoebes and yellow-bellied flycatchers.
Common loons, especially chicks, fared poorly during Vermont’s epic floods of 2023 and 2024, with many pond- and lakeside nests (pictured, top) swamped and parent birds unable to find food in the turbid waters. In North Carolina, 2024’s Hurricane Helene scoured mountain streams that are home to the eastern hellbender (pictured, bottom)—North 皇冠体育app官网平台’s largest native amphibian—causing significant mortality in some streams.
Can wildlife withstand the weather?
Wildlife also can be counted among the casualties of extreme rainfall and flooding around Asheville, North Carolina, in September 2024. Since 1990, this metropolitan area’s human population had increased from 191,774 to 381,000—thanks in large part to its reputation for natural beauty and ideal weather, including relative safely from the worst impacts of climate change.
But on September 27, Hurricane Helene swelled the French Broad River, inundating Asheville with waters that crested at a record 24 feet and killed more than 100 people statewide. , an international consortium of climatologists, estimates that climate change made Helene’s rainfall 10 percent heavier in North Carolina and increased the storm’s maximum wind speeds there by 11 percent.
While state and federal agencies still are assessing the storm’s toll on wildlife, , vice president of conservation policy for the (NCWF), an NWF affiliate, calls the amount of devastation to wildlife and their habitat “high.”
Of particular concern, he says, is the area’s population of . North 皇冠体育app官网平台’s largest native amphibian, it is now being as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. “We know Helene scoured the mountain streams that are the hellbender’s habitat, with significant mortalities in places,” Fuller says.
Also of grave concern, Helene knocked down millions of trees in forests known to be the last refuge of the federally endangered . It will take some time, hopefully by the end of 2025, for state wildlife managers to make reliable estimates of the precise toll on flying squirrel and hellbender populations, Fuller says. Job cuts for federal wildlife managers and the suspension of federal grants threaten this work, he adds.
Meanwhile, NCWF and its partners are working with state agencies to include the needs of wildlife in plans for rebuilding the flood-ravaged region. “We all agree we must rebuild more resiliency in the face of climate change,” Fuller says. “That includes building stronger habitat connectivity with better wildlife corridors, road crossings and culvert modifications, especially in areas subject to intense storm effects.”
In Vermont, state wildlife and natural resource managers had long been preparing for disasters such as the 2023 and 2024 floods. A decade earlier, the and University of Vermont published the nation’s first state-level plan for assessing and addressing climate change. The 2014 Vermont Climate Assessment opens with the words: “Climate change is no longer a thing of the future; it is affecting Vermont today.” The good news: By the time the state , its wildlife and land managers had developed science-based plans to address the threats.
Following the 2023–2024 floods, wildlife managers began working with transportation officials, foresters, local governments and groups such as VNRC to include wildlife in plans for upgrading flood-damaged highways, bridges and drainage culverts to better withstand extreme rains. “After the floods of 2023, we began looking more urgently at development patterns, wetlands and dams, with a bigger focus on removing dams and changing how we plan conservation for river corridors,” says VNRC’s Hierl.
Jens Hawkins-Hilke, a conservation planner for the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department, cites as an example the pilot project of a “wildlife shelf” built in 2014 where four lanes of Interstate 89 and two lanes of U.S. Route 2 pass over the Little River between Montpelier and Burlington. It’s one of the busiest stretches of highway in the state, and it divided two large, wildlife-rich blocks of forest totaling more than 100,000 acres. Over the last decade, the shelf has allowed scores of animals—including moose, bobcats, deer and mink—to safely pass under three bridges and six lanes of traffic without entering either the roadway or the river.
Following this successful model, the department and the state’s transportation agency in 2023 received a $1.6 million federal grant to design a massive wildlife tunnel, 150 feet wide and 200 feet long, passing under another busy stretch of I-89 and Route 2. The underpass would allow safe passage along a major wildlife corridor that follows the spine of the Green Mountains. Funding for the project’s construction phase, however, is now threatened by the uncertain future of the Federal Highway Administration’s .
Vermont’s cold-adapted species, such as moose (pictured, top), increasingly will require an ability to move as the state’s climate changes. Wildlife and land managers are working on “wildlife shelves” to facilitate the animals’ safe passage around roads and rivers. To help cold-adapted fish, such as brook trout (pictured, bottom), they’re repairing flood-damaged roads to include culverts providing pathways for fish to reach higher, colder waters.
Adapting to the new normal
To improve survival chances for Vermont’s brook trout and other cold-adapted fish, state fisheries biologists are working with transportation officials to guide the repair of flood-damaged roads with culverts and bridges designed to ease the animals’ movements. To thrive, brook trout need streams that generally stay below 68 degrees F, explains state fisheries biologist Jud Kratzer. As the region’s temperatures continue to rise, fish will need pathways to reach higher, colder waters.
In addition, Kratzer and his colleagues are dropping trees into headwater streams to provide shelter for trout eggs and hatchlings during floods. “For decades, we’ve been dredging our rivers and removing fallen trees and beaver dams, treating our rivers more like drainage ditches than fish habitat,” he says. “As a result, floods turn Vermont rivers into overpowered torrents that scour out trout eggs and young fish while undermining bridges and roads.” In the wake of heavy rains in the future, Kratzer hopes the dropped trees will slow flooded streams so they spread out into surrounding flood plains rather than destructively gouge out their banks and beds.
To help loons fare better in the changing climate, VCE is working to reduce the turbidity of lakes and ponds by teaching homeowners and townships how to reduce runoff from shoreline properties, roads and other developments. Recommended actions include maintaining a buffer area of shoreline shrubs and other native plants. “Loons are doing well in Vermont right now,” Hanson says. “We need to keep our lakes healthy to ensure their future.”
Stein lauds projects such as these, but he adds that “there also are times when we must go beyond just trying to resist climate changes. Sometimes it becomes how do we move with the change and manage it, even if it means accepting that a place has to transform to become, say, a saltwater marsh or a flood plain, rather than fighting to keep flood waters out.”
On Ricker Pond, my husband and I have accepted that extreme rains and flooding may be Vermont’s new normal. We replaced the deck of our twice-lost wooden dock with a metal grate that allows rising water to pass through. And my twice-flooded vegetable garden? We’re replacing it with native blueberry bushes that don’t mind the occasional dunk and can help stabilize the ground in future floods. Meanwhile, I’ll be investing my love of growing food into making our town’s community garden a success ... on higher ground.
NWF priority
Climate-Smart Conservation
The National Wildlife Federation is at the forefront of the field of climate adaptation, working with federal and state agencies and other organizations to make conservation projects more resilient by incorporating climate change into plans to protect species and ecosystems. Learn more.
Read about writer Jessica Snyder Sachs.
