SRRC - Watershed Education Program

Overview

The SRRC believes that informed, caring citizen communities are often effective stewards of the ecosystem. Our community is essential to the restoration of our watershed. To help facilitate the development our local restoration community, we run a Watershed Education Program in local schools and in the community as a whole.

Our program operates in both local schools to teach natural resource sciences, ecosystem management, and watershed stewardship. Students at Forks of Salmon Elementary School and Junction Elementary School learn scientific methods and gain valuable watershed knowledge through experiential teaching.

Our curriculum meets state standards and reflects current resource management methods. The core program includes hands-on experience with fish surveys, salmonid aquarium incubation, water monitoring, native and invasive plant management, and general education about fire, roads, wildlife, and water use. The project is enriched by volunteers from the community, local tribes and resource agencies.

The SRRC helps facilitate an annual Watershed Fair in which the students, teachers, and local organizations present their restoration work.

In addition to our program in the schools, we also hold community outreach and watershed education activities for the local community, visitors, and the general public. We have a variety of distributable outreach materials and we conduct a variety of workshops in the community.

The Watershed Ed Program is supported by funding and staff from the California Department of Fish & Game, US Forest Service, US Fish & Wildlife Service, AmeriCorps Watershed Stewards Project, Karuk Tribe of California, and Siskiyou County Office of Education.

Watershed Fair

A highlight of the Watershed Education Program is our annual Salmon River Watershed Fair, which is held in the late spring.

Community members, parents, and all of the river students come together to celebrate the uniqueness of our watershed. The event is fun and educational and gives students the opportunity to display their watershed education projects.

What Happens At the Fair?

Oral Presentations

Oral communication about learned knowledge is an important component to any education program. Students give short presentations about studies they participated in or topics they researched.

Poster Board Displays

Students create poster boards or visual media to display information about watershed projects they study. Professionals are also invited to display poster boards to inform students and community members about projects and studies occurring in the watershed.

Educational Activities

Students participate in fun, educational activities such as: a poster board scavenger hunt, the Nose Knows game, Hooks and Ladders, making fish print t-shirts, creating watershed banners and silk paintings, and building watershed models to scale.

Student Activities

These are some (but not all) of the activities that are part of our watershed education curriculum.

Fall Chinook Survey

The Fall Chinook Survey is a cooperative project which produces data to help estimate of the fall Chinook population of the Salmon River.

Elementary students in grades 6-8 begin by participating in a mandatory survey training and whitewater safety course with the California Department of Fish & Game, US Forest Service, the Karuk Tribe, the Yurok Tribe, Salmon River Restoration Council, and community members. After completing the training, students and teachers survey assigned stream reaches weekly looking for salmon carcasses and redds.

Students learn to take scale samples, measure carcass length, identify species and sex, tag carcasses and record their observations in data notebooks.

The data that students collect is given to the California Department of Fish and Game and is used to estimate salmon populations for the Salmon River. The data, together with data from the Klamath River, is then used in determining annual fishing allotments for commercial fishermen, Native American tribes, and sport fishermen.

The salmon surveys are an enriching, fun experience for children. Students learn valuable skills such as scientific techniques and protocol. The students participating in this program are set up to become excellent candidates for competitive local jobs in the natural resources field. Professionals from the US Forest Service, the Karuk Tribe, and the California Department of Fish and Game have given our students high praise for their commitment to the project and the high quality of their work.

Native & Non-Native Plant Studies

River students study native and non-native plant communities by participating in botany walks, propagating native plants, and by controlling noxious weed populations.

Each year students participate in wildflower walks with local botanists and learn to identify native plants.

Students have also raised native plants from seed and planted them in riparian areas along the Salmon River. This year Forks of Salmon and Junction Schools grew Blue Rye grass for the new native plant garden in the Forks of Salmon Community Park.

Since 1998, students have adopted sites with noxious weed problems and have eradicated weed populations using the same non-chemical techniques used in the SRRC’s Noxious Weed Program.

Water Quality Monitoring

Students in the Watershed Education Program help collect data for SRRC’s Water Quality Monitoring Program.

Students use the same protocol and data sheets as the agencies, tribes and SRRC personnel who participate in the program. In addition to monitoring temperature, students also conduct macro-invertebrate surveys, measure dissolved oxygen content, collect canopy cover information, measure channel width, and record water depth on their water quality field trips. Photo points and GPS coordinates are used to ensure consistent and accurate location of monitoring sites.

At the close of each season, the temperature data is entered into the Klamath Resource Information System by SRRC staff. Charts and graphs allow students to analyze the temperature trends in their watershed.

Program Coordinator

Shannon Flarity,

Salmon River Restoration Council
PO Box 1089
25631 Sawyers Bar Road (shipping only)
Sawyers Bar, CA 96027

phone: 530-462-4665 or 800-840-4665
fax: 530-462-4664