The Story of VINS

by Cassie Horner

VINS enters its third decade with notable accomplishments and exciting plans. Follow our tracks to see where we've been, and join us as the future takes flight.

"It all started in 1970 when one of my patients heading the regional planning commission asked me to head up a study of the Ottauquechee River because my office was right on the river," recalls Dr. David Laughlin when asked to describe the beginnings of VINS. Others joined Laughlin in the effort, which led to the first water quality litigation in the state.

This group, a bit bruised from the public struggle to clean up the water, pondered how to do things differently. "At the end of the fight, Sally [David's former wife, Sally Laughlin], Rick Farrar, June McKnight, and I were having dinner at our house on Hartland Hill," David says. "There has to be a better way,' we said, and we came up with the idea of an environmental organization aimed at kids." That organization became the Vermont Institute of Natural Science, better known as VINS.

The mission of VINS stressed education as the way to change attitudes and maintain a healthy environment. At the time of VINS's founding, Sally Laughlin was working at the former Dartmouth College Museum, developing programs for teachers to use in their classrooms. She was also learning how to band birds from Farrar at the banding station he started at the Woodstock Country School, a private school in South Woodstock. "We pulled all those things together," she recalls - bird banding, the river work and educational activities - to found VINS.

With a board of directors in place (David Laughlin was the first chair), Rick Farrar was hired as the executive director of VINS. When Rick left VINS after two years, Sally Laughlin accepted the position. For the next 20 years, Sally led VINS, shepherding its growth to more than 5,000 members all across Vermont, and establishing the education programs statewide.

"My philosophy was, with education we had to use volunteers because there was no way we could do it all with paid staff," Sally Laughlin says. ELF developed out of the need to run a program with volunteers, growing organically with local parents exploring the environment with their kids. One of these parents was Jenepher Lingelbach, who is now President of the VINS Board of Trustees.

The first workshop took place in January 1973. A group of parents went out with Klint Wigren on a winter walk along Gilead Brook. "I'd walked in the woods all my life," Jenepher says, "and didn't know beans about tracks. I was thrilled." The workshop "Tracks" was born, with Jen Lingelbach and others coming up with activities. In the spring, Sally Laughlin developed the "Ponds" workshop. "It went on from there," Jenepher says.

Ironically, a key part of the formalization of ELF as a program grew from the 1973 energy crisis. According to Jen Lingelbach, the fuel shortage made it "clear that to go to the schools was the way to go. The decision to travel to where our audiences are, especially in schools, was a wise one. It was genius to involve the parents." Taking ELF to Vermont towns created a community setting with what she refers to as "affinity groups." With support from VINS staff, these groups became self-perpetuating. In 1986, the ELF curriculum was published as Hands-On Nature. The book has sold so successfully it was revised in 1999, and the new edition has received several awards. In 2002, VINS education programs for all ages reached over 35,000 schoolchildren and 26,000 adults annually throughout Vermont and beyond.

From the beginning the research program at VINS was also heavily dependent on volunteers, whether the project was bird banding or trekking around Vermont on a bird count. In1986, Chris Rimmer came aboard as director and ever since then has nurtured a Conservation Biology program that ranges from protecting endangered species in Vermont such as the Common Loon and Peregrine Falcon to forest bird monitoring. Board President Jen Lingelbach comments on the way that VINS research has become increasingly recognized: "Our voices are worth listening to. That credibility is one of the wonderful cornerstones of the founding of VINS."

As ELF and research were developing in the early years, so were other parts of VINS. That growth was made possible with June McKnight's gift through the Nature Conservancy of the land and barn on Church Hill in 1974. The gift, given in memory of her friend Marjorie Bragdon, consisted of 57 acres and the structure near the road that once housed Eric Jacquith's cows.

Section by section, the barn became habitable. Money to renovate the back of the lower floor came unexpectedly. "Sally and I were at the barn one New Year's day," Laughlin recalls. "The office was closed. A knock came on the door. A fellow came in, Dan Meyers, who said, 'What can be done?' He gave the money for the next section of the building in memory of his brother."

The upstairs became the next goal. The Laughlins traveled to Michigan to meet with the Kresge Foundation. "It was really a long shot," David says, but they got the grant. With additional help from Laurance Rockefeller and the architectural design donated by Woodstock architect Charles Helmer, the auditorium was built.

By 1982, VINS had plans for the Vermont Raptor Center. "The reason for that was that people were bringing us injured birds all the time," David Laughlin says. Some of those birds lived at the Laughlins' house. Kay McKeever, director of a foundation in Ontario, helped VINS envision a raptor center. "She basically designed our VRC for us," David explains. "It was to be not only a rehabilitation place, but also an educational place. This was a first. No one had really done this in this country." The Vermont Raptor Center opened to the public in 1987 with a behind-the-scenes infirmary and an exhibit area for visitors housing dozens of unreleasable hawks, falcons, eagles, and owls. Within a couple of years, visitation reached 25,000 per year.

By the mid-1990's, VINS was seriously exploring alternatives to expand beyond Church Hill. The board began looking for a site for a larger center that would be designed to accommodate staff, programs, and thousands of visitors. The challenge was finding a site that would be both naturally beautiful and easily accessible to the public.

In 2001, after a search that included visits to almost fifty sites throughout Vermont, VINS purchased 47 acres of rolling forestland near the Quechee Gorge that meets all the requirements of natural beauty, size, and proximity to major highways. The new VINS nature center to be built there, with a projected opening date of 2004, is designed with indoor and outdoor exhibits that will introduce as many as 125,000 visitors each year to the wonders of nature in Vermont. "The future is amazingly bright," says David Laughlin, who is now chairing the capital campaign to build the new center in Quechee.

Looking at the way VINS has grown over the past three decades helps explain the organization's strength and staying power. Jenepher Lingelbach describes the multifaceted history of VINS as a wheel. "It's the image of a wheel where the spokes are very close to the center at the beginning," she says. Over the years, education programs, research, and bird care have grown out from the circle, expanding on their own, but also maintaining the integrity of the wheel. And according to Jenepher, "The circle will continue to expand."