Washington NatureMapping Wildlife News APRIL, 1995
Washington NatureMapping Wildlife News, Complementary Programs
NatureMapping is working with several complementing programs to maximize the benefit to educators.
WDFW Ecosystems Education and Project WILD
The merged Washington Department of Fish and WIldlife has formed an
Ecosystems Education Team to develop stewardship opportunities with
schools and communities. WDFW offers teacher training workshops that
support watershed/ecosystem education. These include Landscaping for
Wildlife workshops with Project WILD and joint UW Gap and WDFW
NatureMapping workshops. WDFW wants to support the creation of outdoor
environmental learning labs on or near school grounds and has grants
available for this purpose. Students will have opportunities to hone
skills for data collection and monitoring, habitat creation and resource
management through the outdoor environmental learning labs. Contact
Margaret Tudor, Ecosystems Education Program, (360) 902-2808.
Salmon in the Classroom
One way to hook kids on caring for the environment is to teach them
about fish and shellfish through fishing. Fishing clinics and equipment
are available to schools, where volunteers teach students how to fish.
Instructors stress ethics, conservation practices and personal safety.
Contact Jim Byrd at (360) 664-2045. Teachers wishing to set up an
aquarium to raise "Salmon in the Classroom" may call Diane Ludwig for
more information at (360) 902-2262. Materials and demonstrations on
shellfish are available through Al Rammer at (360) 249-4628.
Governor's Council on Environmental Education
The Governor's Council on Environmental Education was created in 1990 by
Executive Order 90-06 as part of the Environment 2010 Action Agenda.
Members include directors of Washington's natural resource agencies, the
Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Commissioner of Public Lands
and Washington State University Cooperative Extension. This council is
working with the Watershed Coordinating Council to establish a student
and citizen network for watershed protection. One priority task is to
establish what citizens can do to collect data and monitor natural
resources for communities and agencies. NatureMapping is a key model.
Contact: Bev Isenson (360) 407-7317.
Senior Environmental Corps(SEC)
SEC members are retired natural resource professionals. The Washington
Gap Analysis Project has been using SEC volunteers to ground truth their
land cover maps created from satellite imagery. SEC members travel
throughout the state collecting plant samples, photographs and assessing
maps. We are searching for more volunteers to provide training to
educators interested in ground truth studies program.
GREEN-Northwest
A regional "branch office" of the Global Rivers Environmental Education
Network (GREEN), is a consortium of watershed projects and regional
partners focusing on interdisciplinary community problem-solving
approaches to environmental education and action on a watershed basis.
GREEN Northwest emphasizes maximum use of existing resources through
interwatershed collaboration and partnerships. The success of GREEN
Northwest lies in these coalitions. WDFW is a funding partner to GREEN
Northwest. NatureMapping is working with GREEN to include wildlife and
habitat monitoring with water quality studies for students taking an
environmental inventory of their watershed.
Washington NASA Space Grant consortium (University of Washington)
The Washington NASA Space Grant consortium is a statewide nonprofit
organization established and supported by NASA, with additional funds
provided by state and private sources. Their activities are designed to
improve and enrich basic science and aerospace-related education and
research opportunities for the state's diverse pre-college, college,
university and community learners.
The Washington NASA Space Grant Consortium is offering small grants to
K-12 teachers for science and interdiscipliniary projects. Public,
private and certified home-school teachers are welcome to apply.
Contact: Lisa Peterson (800) 659-1943.
EPA Streamwalkers
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 10 office in Seattle,
in response to requests by several groups and agencies, created a
standardized, easy to use screening tool for monitoring stream corridor
health. More than 10,000 citizens and students now use Streamwalk to
learn more about their streams and rivers. Streamwalkers are invited to
NatureMap while collecting field data. Contact: Laurie Mann (206)
553-1583. updated for internet
Oregon NatureMapping
In Oregon, the Defenders of Wildlife initiated the Oregon Biodiversity
Project which is built around Gap Analysis. This effort includes a
program called NatureMapping which is modeled after Washington's student
and citizen monitoring effort. Educators and other volunteers in Oregon
who are interested in participating should contact Wendy Hudson (503)
697-3222.
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