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Location: Fraser Valley, Chilliwack, Mission, and Abbotsford Project Summary
SUMMARY This project will create a Youth Stewardship program specifically targeted at youth aged 8 - 20 to train them in various stewardship activities such as tree planting, invasive species removal, bat and salmon monitoring. Designed to engage youth in life-long learning and practice, the program will build environmental ethics at the same time as providing a growing annual membership base that will build the Fraser Valley Conservancy’s capacity for the future.
After three years of Amphibian mortality mitigation and monitoring in Ryder Lake, the Fraser Valley Conservancy has concluded that there is a lack of direct-experience and environmental interactive opportunities for youth and families in the Fraser Valley. We received a significant number of complaints last year when we eliminated the need for youth and adult volunteers to directly help (pick up toadlets) during the Amphibian migration. Indirect involvement through manning a barricade was not enthusiastically embraced. We interpreted these complaints as a possible avenue for a project that would directly involve youth and families. Since then, we have had considerable interest by families with our actively engaging volunteer opportunities such as night-time monitoring of toads and bats as well as our Chilliwack River Clean up. The proposed Youth Stewards program will specifically train youth participants in stewardship conservation activities from start to finish including project selection, implementation, and monitoring. The stewardship based member program will inspire and train youth in stewardship activities that demonstrate connections to nature and build environmental ethics which will create healthy sustainable watersheds. By completing a series of stewardship activities throughout the year with FVC staff, youth and families will be able to see the results of their actions making a difference to their daily life, for community parks and for watershed sustainability. The activities will benefit all levels of the food web, including direct benefits to salmon, frogs and herons in aquatic ecosystems and toads, snails, bats and owls in forest ecosystems. A secondary but no lesser issue to be directly addressed is capacity building for the Fraser Valley by having participants pay a membership fee to FVC, but also indirectly by training individuals in stewardship which builds environmental ethics that last a lifetime. Programs that involve stewardship activities are largely unorganized and uncoordinated in the Fraser Valley. OBJECTIVES
METHODS Utilizing the skills gained through a Workplace Innovation Training Grant and the services of Neale.ca, FVC staff have become better at marketing our core programs and building in membership fees as part of the programs in the fulfillment of one of FVC goals to promote and facilitate environmental stewardship actions. The training will increase staff skills in website design, e-newsletters, and social media (facebook and twitter). Lisa Fox holds a Masters in Education and has been using environmental theory and practice to guide landowner contact stewardship practices with successful results for adults for the past eight years and prior to that for youth aged 3 to 18. Lisa has designed formal and in-formal environmental education curricula for the Fraser Valley Trout Hatchery, BC Groundwater Association, and Wild BC. She will use the skills and knowledge gained from these experiences to develop a program that is relevant and complete with respect to the science and environmental education learning concepts. Lisa has also given environmental education training workshops to scouts/guides leaders, non-formal educators, and hundreds of formal classroom teachers. Her training and knowledge of formal education settings (classroom) will also allow for the program to be adopted by classroom teachers, scout and guide leaders, and environmental clubs by providing relevant content while promoting the program to students. This aspect of methodology will be used to promote the program through in-class presentations / activities as the opposed to being a program for solely school classes. The goal will be gain volunteers stewards for FVC not to be a school program. Methodologically speaking, presenting real stewardship opportunities takes coordination and organizing methods along with consideration of risk factors rather than true scientific methodology involved in habitat rehabilitation projects. Safety procedures around water and for night time activities will be managed / mitigated by providing training on appropriate first aid and safety as well as general emergency training for program staff. With regard to the activities undertaken in this program, all will be approved activities and designed by the land management or other professional staff. For example, the Mission Scout planting work was coordinated by FVC but Jim Taylor, land management person for Silverdale Wetlands, identified the specific location, approved the plant list, and provided details on the expectations of the work that was undertaken. We will be acquiring approved methodology where available for all activities completed under this program. We will provide a minimum of six seasonally appropriate opportunities and each one will be selected based on a combination of environmental need, ability and interest. By ensuring we provide safe, educational, and engaging activities we will get early adoption of the program goals and be successful in both raising membership but also in creating a tie in with families through stewardship agreements and the wider community as this program becomes sustainable and more and more popular. We hope other stewardship groups will have their own version of the FVC’s youth stewards program in the future. BENEFITS This program will build the stewardship capacity of communities in the Fraser Basin. Youth will want to implement their new knowledge and skills at home because we will illustrate human connectivity to watersheds; thereby, increasing the reach of this program far beyond the location where the stewardship activity takes place into the communities where the youth stewards live. Further because of interconnectivity of ecosystems and watersheds every stewardship activity completed will increase salmonid long-term sustainability by raising awareness of this watershed connection and the actual habitat improvement activity on the land. At least half of the stewardship activities will be focused on salmonids or riparian / aquatic ecosystems which provides for a more direct impact for salmonids. The signing of stewardship agreements will provide a permanent reminder of commitments made to stewardship.
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