Our partnership with DOTs in the Northeast largely began through that effort and shared recognition of the need to be working across disciplines and across borders and really pairing transportation planning with conservation planning.

Habitat connectivity and transportation ecology has really become a mainstream part of a DOT's toolkit.

It's no longer fringe.

In the past 20-some years, it's really become part of the mainstream toolkit.

Even at the highest levels of state and provincial governments, in 2016, the New England governors and Eastern Canadian premiers signed a resolution articulating the importance of habitat connectivity across jurisdictional And that resolution specifically instructs DOTs and fish and wildlife agencies across the region to collaborate across jurisdictional boundaries on habitat connectivity.

And that resolution was recently updated, I think, in 2025.

So the importance of habitat connectivity is really recognized at the highest levels of state and provincial governments.

And, you know, we all kind of put our heads together and really leaned on the model that Vermont had already created, which Chris can speak to best as one of the founders of Vermont's program.