Sisters students get their hands dirty

Young people overran the Whychus watershed last week, from above Sisters to 35 miles downstream. It was all part of a hands-on Upper Deschutes Watershed Council (UDWC) conservation and education project.

Sisters High School graduate Laura Campbell, Assistant Education Director of UDWC, led students from Sisters Middle School above town, studying the water quality of the creek and planting trees and shrubs along the shoreline.

While Campbell was working with SMS students on upper Whychus Creek, Koleen Yake, Educational Director for UDWC, had a bus-load of juniors from the Sisters High School IEE (Interdisciplinary Environmental Education) project planting trees and shrubs on the Wolftree property 35 miles downstream.

The hands-on (and hands-dirty) approach is key to the educational value of the project.

"What we've changed about our education programs is, first and foremost, that kids have to be on the creek," Yake told The Nugget.

"We have curriculum, books, classroom presentations and lectures, but we have to get them out of the classroom and doing work on the land for it all to make sense and become reality, a vital part of our partnership."

Will Saunders and Sebastian Boehm, seniors at SHS, have been in the IEE program for two years, doing hands-on learning and conservation projects on several sections of Whychus Creek.

Will and Sebastian are mentors who assisted the 20 juniors taking part in a project planting 200 of the total 400 alder, choke cherry, birch and wild rose throughout the Wolftree property on the lower reaches of Whychus Creek.

Yake outlined the role plants play along the banks of the creek, known as the riparian zone. With the students seated in the meadow around her, she defined the history of how people used the creek and its environs for irrigation and grazing land for livestock; how these activities originally took place without much regard for the damages to fisheries and land.

She involved the students in a lively discussion about why they were replanting areas adjacent to the creek to cool the water, hold back erosion, and provide a healthy ecosystem throughout the Whychus drainage.

As the students hiked back out of the deep canyon to their waiting bus, Gabe Rietmann, a junior from SHS, was asked what he thought about the work he was doing on Whychus Creek. He responded, "I want to help this beautiful creek, and give back to what has given me fun and enjoyment."