Sometimes There’s Value in Getting a Little Mud on Your Shoes

Today we’re hearing from Brian Marsh, a biologist working at our Delaware Bay Estuary Project office. Brian’s work focuses on land and wetland restoration; however, he increasingly appreciates the value of projects working with students where the conservation value is harder to quantify.

A flower fly on swamp sunflower at Caesar Rodney High School, Credit: Brian Marsh/USFWS

Habitat conservation today only means so much when we face a tomorrow where people don’t value the outdoors. When I work with students and teachers, I realize many of them don’t have the same relationship with the outdoors that I take for granted. Little things tip me off to the degree that some students are disconnected from nature.

For example…shoes.

Me, to a student wearing fancy kicks on planting day: “Why didn’t you bring in a different pair of shoes?”

 

Student, who doesn’t want to walk on mulch, grass, and most certainly not dirt: “Why would I have a different pair of shoes?”

To have only one pair of shoes and no mud shoes to play in? This student’s reality was so different from my own experience of only having muddy shoes at that age. Clean shoes were uncool.

I grew up on a farm, did landscaping jobs in high school and college, and have been doing restoration- oriented work for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service since 2005. So, I thought using a shovel is about as basic a thing as can be. But I was wrong. Working with the students, I further realized that they had very different experiences than I did growing up, which shaped their perception of the outdoors and the foundation for the lessons I was about to teach. I was excited to talk about how native grass plants relate to larval pollinator populations, soil health, water quality, and bird habitat, but the students needed an intro lesson first. I realized I had to redefine my square one.

A commonly seen eastern pondhawk at Laurel High School, Credit: Brian Marsh/USFWS

Wow, the more time I spend with our younger generations the more I’m aware that connecting students to nature is “mission critical”.

Through environmental education, it’s our responsibility to work with teachers and administrators to understand the challenges they face so that we can  work to dispel the notion that all habitats are green, clean, and tidy. Some are messy, unkempt, and have brown plants. And yet, they are still perfectly good habitats. We forget that even habitat can be a radical idea to those who don’t think about it daily.

Habitat projects at schools take time, need to involve everyone, and need to be engaging to both students and school staff for them to be sustainable.

Students need basic instruction but can really take hold of the idea of stewardship given the chance, Credit: Debbie Magnin

The Delaware Bay Estuary Project works with several schools throughout Delaware and we definitely see progress and reason for hope. Here are some examples…

Shue-Medil Middle School in Newark formed a team to create schoolyard habitat and make their school greener. Their monthly meetings are well attended by administrators, teachers, facilities staff, and students. They’re following the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Schoolyard Habitat Guide. Team building and a supportive administration make all the difference at this school. The principal’s father is even helping by cutting nesting and bat box pieces out of cedar boards we provided and the students help make them.

Students adding some diversity to their meadow at Shue-Medil Middle School, Credit: Rick Mckowski

Shue-Medil Middle School in urban Newark went all in on habitat. Converting the two acres of mowed lawn in front of their school into a meadow. Here’s pics from spring and fall of 2017 after a seeding. This school has been a great partner! Credit: Brian Marsh/USFWS

Shue-Medil Middle School students exploring their meadow, Credit: Rick Mckowski

A small private school in Georgetown, The Jefferson School, hired a full-time environmental education coordinator last year for their 109 students. They have a wall of boots at the back door. A little boy keeps his shovel in the principal’s office, which he collects daily to go dig outside in his free time. A state forest surrounds the school. Students work together to care for the school’s goats and chickens. Students play in an outdoor mud kitchen. Students are expected to be outside here!

In contrast in Wilmington, the Warner Elementary school’s building takes up almost every inch of their property, but they manage to have a garden and want to create habitat with us through their very dedicated student green team that already runs their recycling program.

Laurel Middle and High School is in rural Laurel Delaware and is bordered by a tributary with migratory fish runs. The Delaware Bay Estuary Project is gradually building a relationship with the school and their agribusiness teachers are stepping up to help with schoolyard habitat, including a one-acre meadow, four rain gardens, and riparian plantings in partnership with Delaware State Parks and NOAA.

Storm water management and schoolyard habitat can go together well. This basin at Laurel High School has become a rain-garden in a high profile area, Credit: Brian Marsh/USFWS

Caesar Rodney School District has gone from having little interest in habitat to hiring a full-time environmental education specialist who has a lot of ideas and energy. The district is considering turning a property shared by a middle school, elementary school, and special-needs school into an ecocampus, which  will be a model for the district, state, and beyond! We’ve helped with creating schoolyard habitat at three of the schools in the district.

The Caesar Rodney High School rain garden is helping staff at the high school see the potential for schoolyard habitat, Credit: Brian Marsh/USFWS

Caesar Rodney High School in Dover, Delaware has made a courtyard that students walk through daily to get between building wings into a very engaging rain garden that collected roof water, Credit: Brian Marsh/USFWS

Delaware has an awesome community of organizations and federal and state partners looking to make inroads into schools to help restore connections to nature. Delaware is a small state and we should be able to move the needle here. The community has come together to form Delaware Children in Nature and the Delaware Association of Environmental Education, both of which the Delaware Bay Estuary Project is active in. More schools are showing interest. Momentum is growing because of motivated teachers, administrators, biologists willing to lend a hand and kindle a spark, and of course the students and their natural curiosity.

We have a challenge ahead of us to foster a conservation ethic but it’s an important one! I think everyone in conservation should take opportunities to work with kids to better understand the degree of disconnection to nature and the challenges it represents. And by kids I mean average students, not just the handful of kids at each school that are the outdoor loving, curious, science geeks that we can relate to.

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The Delaware Bay Estuary Project is part of the Coastal Program, a habitat conservation program of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that focuses on conserving the ecological integrity of beaches, bays, estuaries, and coastal watersheds. The Delaware Bay Estuary Project works through voluntary partnerships with a variety of public and private entities, such as private landowners, land trusts, municipalities, states, and other federal agencies, to enhance, restore, conserve, study, and monitor habitat for key federal trust wildlife resources in the Delaware River and Delmarva Peninsula ecosystems.

 

Archery in Philadelphia: BYO Action Star

Have you ever seen an archer in an action movie and thought, “I bet I would look really cool doing that”? Turns out you’re not alone. Although archery is one of the world’s oldest forms of hunting, it’s still one of the most dreamed about pastimes, especially in the greater Philadelphia area. That’s why we stepped up at America’s first urban refuge, John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum, and started an open-to-the-public archery program, with an overwhelmingly positive response.

Back in April, the refuge staff took an all-day training course to become USA Archery level 1 certified. This training included archery safety, form, and an overall “how-to” for teaching methods. We figured that by becoming certified we could offer a fun way for students to learn a new skill that fits in with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s mission.

The rest of that school year was a blast. We taught archery to over 200 Philadelphia students, most of whom had never done it before. Just so you can picture a student’s face while trying archery for the first time, imagine seeing your favorite action star in real life, and then realizing you ARE that action star.

Don’t be fooled by my face, this was an INTENSE story.

Me (in the middle) clearly a little too excited for archery at a community meeting. Good thing I have Kelly Q and Kelly K, from the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum’s Environmental Education team to keep me grounded.

First shots at a community meeting

Public programming for refuge visitors came that summer, with two pilot classes titled “Youth Archery” and “Adult Archery”. These two classes were each an hour long, and were a basic introduction to the sport. We also scheduled a couple events called “Pop-Up Archery” where our full range was set up for the public to receive personalized coaching from refuge staff on a walk-up basis. This way, visitors could spend as much or little time as they wanted on the range.

Posing with their targets; Rangers with one of our school groups after an archery lesson

The morning after I came into work from these events being posted on social media, I had received over 170 emails inquiring about registration. When I checked the Facebook event, over 1.9 thousand people were interested. Although there were only 19 spots in each class, I was THRILLED that I could tell so many people to come back for Pop-Up Archery. And boy, did they ever. The next Pop-Up event we had almost 200 people line up to try archery, most of them for the very first time.

I’ve been living in Philadelphia for the past eight years; I know from experience that there aren’t too many places to try out archery. Most clubs in or around the city exist for serious archers and there’s usually some sort of fee for classes. I always believed trying archery for the first time — especially when you feel like you have no idea what you’re doing— was incredibly intimidating.

When spring rolls around, John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum will offer free archery programming to anyone over the age of 10 that wants to try it. There will be a ranger right next to each person for their very first shot, so it’s always a personalized, safe, and engaging experience.

To me, the most powerful part of the archery program, isn’t the archery itself, but it’s connecting people to a green space often times they didn’t know existed. “Wow, I didn’t know all of this was out here” is a phrase I hear quite often. Now, I get to see those same faces over and over again. There are dozens of kids and adults I see at every archery event, that I see now on the refuge hiking, bird watching or riding their bikes. Most of the rangers know them by name. It’s rewarding to know that our community has the opportunity to experience the outdoors through being their own archery action star at John Heinz NWR.

Biking for Butterflies

What’s a Butterbike? Today we find out from Wildlife Specialist, Jared Green, at Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge. 

Monarch butterfly populations have been on the decline in recent years, which inspired one young naturalist to go on a 10,000-mile bike ride along their migration route to bring awareness to their plight. Despite being one of the most recognizable wildlife species in North America, monarchs have not been immune to the pressures of habitat loss and fragmentation. Naturalist Sara Dykman teamed up with Beyond a Book, an adventure-linked education project that uses the experiences of real life adventurers to engage students, to document the monarch’s annual multi-generational migration from Mexico to Canada and back again for her Butterbike Project.

Sara began her journey alongside the monarchs in March in Zitácuaro, Mexico, then spending the next four months bicycling north through the Midwestern United States and into Canada, before dropping back down into the Northeastern U.S. Along the way, she has made many stops to educate the local communities about their importance along the monarch migration route. Popular with children and schools, she hopes to inspire to community members to plant milkweed, which serves as the only host plant for monarch butterfly caterpillars, and other native nectar plants in their backyards and community parks.

Sara made one of her many stops at the Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge in Sudbury, Massachusetts, to inform local residents of the impressive migration that monarchs undertake each year and the threats they are facing. She gave a presentation to several children that were part of a youth summer camp overseen by Massachusetts Audubon. After showing the children pictures from her trip, she guided them through the Refuge’s pollinator garden, pointing out several monarch butterfly caterpillars on milkweed plants. Later that afternoon, members of the general public were treated to a similar presentation and pollinator walk outside the visitor center.

Sara is currently outside Buffalo, New York and she anticipates finishing her round-trip journey to Mexico in December. Click here to follow her progress on the Butterbike blog.