Students Learn About Conservation

Partnership Hopes To Get Students Involved In Projects

Springdale High sophomore Kage (cq) Stroubel (cq) (left) and senior Chase McDowell look over the watershed map while on a hike in Cave Springs on Friday, Jan. 3, 2014, during a leadership summit for EAST students with the Illinois River Watershed Project.
Springdale High sophomore Kage (cq) Stroubel (cq) (left) and senior Chase McDowell look over the watershed map while on a hike in Cave Springs on Friday, Jan. 3, 2014, during a leadership summit for EAST students with the Illinois River Watershed Project.

CAVE SPRINGS — Victoria Burton walked around Watershed Sanctuary in Cave Springs snapping photos to take back to school and share with classmates.

At A Glance

Four Keys To Conservation Leadership

• Awareness: Be mindful of resources and processes around you.

• Appreciation: Understand and value the environmental, social and economic benefits of conserving natural resources.

• Education: Stay informed about conservation-related issues and solutions.

• Action: Try to implement solutions for conservation related issues, and share knowledge with others.

Source: Lauren Ray, Illinois River Watershed Partnership


At A Glance

Tour Destinations

• Watershed Sanctuary in Cave Springs

• Natural Falls State Park in Oklahoma

• Fisher Ford Whitewater Recreation Area, Siloam Springs

• Lake Wedington in Ozark National Forest

• West Side Wastewater Treatment Plant, Fayetteville

• Mount Kessler, Fayetteville

Source: Illinois River Watershed Partnership

Burton, a junior at Har-Ber High School, said she was interested in Friday’s conservation leadership summit because she’s working on a sustainability project through Har-Ber’s Environmental And Spatial Technology program.

Thirty students from Springdale High School, Har-Ber High School, Greenland High School, Prairie Grove Middle School, West Fork Middle School and Haas Hall Academy attended the summit sponsored by Illinois River Watershed Partnership, said Delia Haak, executive director. Most of the students are in Environmental And Spatial Technology programs at their schools.

The summit started with ice breakers for the students to get to know each other, an overview of the watershed and environmental conservation and a short hike through the sanctuary.

The teens’ boots crunched on frozen grass and leaves as they walked toward the fenced off cave at the back of the sanctuary. Snow lay on the ground in patches and on the bottom of the drained lake. A few students chattered quietly, a couple took photos and Lauren Ray, education outreach coordinator for the partnership, talked to the group about the sanctuary’s cave and the species inside of it.

Burton, 17, said the summit fits well with the purpose of the Environmental And Spatial Technology program, in which students take on leadership roles and work to solve problems in the community. She wants to make other students at her school more aware of conservation.

Ray said the summit was about immersing the students in nature. She said she became interested in conservation as a child because she spent a lot of time outdoors.

“I’d like to pass that experience down to high school students,” she said.

Getting the next generation involved with the partnership’s projects is one of the goals of the summit, Haak said. She wants to see the students come back and help with planting native plants, creating rain gardens and creating new trails.

“They’re the ones that will be carrying on the legacy,” she said.

Emily Redmon, 13, an eighth-grader in the Environmental And Spatial Technology program at West Fork Middle School, said she wants to help with future projects. She was interested in the summit because she wanted to learn about conservation and geocaching, a type of scavenger hunt using coordinates and a global positioning system.

The students spent the day traveling in vans to different watershed locations. They did geocaching activities along the way. The first one was at the sanctuary. It only took a couple minutes for the students to find a plastic container attached to a message board. A pen and list of names of people who had found it previously were inside.

Chase McDowell, 18, a senior in the program at Springdale High School, said he was interested in attending the summit because of the geocaching activities.

“It’s basically a big treasure hunt,” he said. “I like that.”

McDowell said he became more interested in the summit once it started, because he began to learn facts about conservation and the local environment. He said he was learning more than he expected.

Tracie Ashley, Eprogram facilitator at Prairie Grove Middle School, said she wants the students to learn they can make a difference in their communities through conservation. The summit is also a good opportunity for the students to network.

“It’s neat to know that a senior can learn from my eighth-grader and vice versa,” she said.

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