Whew - what a school year! SRT's Education Department had a fast-paced, jam-packed, and incredibly fun last few months with students of all ages, exploring and learning about the local environment at SRT nature preserves! Now, we're taking a step back to look at who did what .. and to choose the best of the best!

 Check out our newly released "SRT Superlatives" below:

Most Likely To Make a Splash - Trout in the Classroom!

Trout in the Classroom returned to SRT's EARTH Academy program this Spring with a real splash! In this program, elementary school students raise trout (from egg to fry) in tanks in their classrooms, and, when the trout are big enough, they go on a fieldtrip to release their trout into the wild! This year, we had a few dozen elementary school students from across Tulare County travel to River Ridge Ranch - a beautiful ranch owned by long-time SRT partners - to release their trout into the Tule River, and participate in a field trip led by our very own EARTH Technicians!

This was a great opportunity for our high school students to step up and lead stations, gain public speaking skills, and become more confident in teaching younger students about the environment. We are so proud of the way in which they stepped up to lead - this was a first for many of them!

The elementary school students gained a greater appreciation of the habitat requirements for their trout, what macroinvertebrates they eat, the intricacies of watersheds, and more! And of course - they each got to name and release their trout into the river, which was the highlight of the trip! We always enjoy all Trout in the Classroom fieldtrips, and are looking forward to continuing and growing the program in the future!

Greatest Teachers - Sequoia Environmental Youth Leaders

This year's Sequoia Environmental Youth Leaders (formerly called Youth Advisory Council members) take home the medal for being the best outdoor educators of the year.

 They spent the first half of the year working together to design and finalize outdoor activities and environmental curriculum from scratch, and then turned around to deliver these lessons to third and fourth grade students in the Spring - and did an amazing job! The lessons were based on Next Generation Science Standards, California Environmental Principles and Concepts, and other standards, ensuring that they were all appropriate for the younger students and complemented what they were already learning in class.

 The high school students did a phenomenal job stepping up and leading hundreds of younger students from Porterville and Lindsay Unified school districts through over a dozen fieldtrips at the McCarthy Blue Oak Ranch Preserve! They taught students about the local environment, weather versus climate, the flora and fauna of the region, how to catch and identify macroinvertebrates and fish, and promoted creativity and reflection through art-based nature journaling activities! 

 We are so proud of our high school SEYLeaders, and are looking forward to another great year of educating and fun at the preserve!

Best Artists - Kindergarteners on a fieldtrip to Kaweah Oaks Preserve (and other K-12 students)

Ever think about doing art outside? If you ask our K-12 students who came on a fieldtrip with us this past year, it’s a blast! We had dozens of students, from Kindergarteners on their first fieldtrip ever to high schoolers who examined natural phenomena closely to make realistic recordings of what they were seeing, explore the natural world and reflect on their experiences through art! From going on a color scavenger hunt, to documenting the current weather, to comparing the differences between crayons, markers, and watercolor paints - our students had many opportunities to see the world through a different lens and get creative in their expression! It’s always a good day to do art!

Best Photographers - City Nature Challenge Participants

We don’t want to upstage the professional photographers who come to our preserves.. but these photos taken by our students during the City Nature Challenge are quite amazing! Over a four day period in April, people from all around the world participated in the City Nature Challenge, which is a lighthearted competition between cities and regions to make the most identifiable observations of wild nature. In participating in the challenge, cities or regions can support citizen science, promote outdoor exploration, and foster a love for the natural world in the general population. Here in Tulare County, Sequoia Riverlands Trust managed and hosted the City Nature Challenge. Though people from all across the county were making observations and uploading them to iNaturalist, we want to highlight some of the amazing observations our own EARTH Technicians made during this period at our various SRT nature preserves! From beautiful plants to special animal species, we made some amazing observations this year! And together with the other observers, we made over 700 observations across the county, beating Tulare County’s 2023 record!

Most Adventurous

Our students in the Nature Explorers afterschool program take home the prize for being the most adventurous! In this program, students learned about the local watershed, water cycle, and more in their afterschool session on campus every Tuesday, and then came on a fieldtrip to Kaweah Oaks Preserve every Thursday. By the end of the program, these students were experts on the preserve! During the fieldtrips they hiked all over the preserve, participated in hands-on games and team building activities, crossed bridges, climbed trees, met some cows, and battled many different weather changes. They kept up their excitement and had a great time through it all - and even came back on a longer Saturday fieldtrip with their family! This was a really cool opportunity for students to get to explore the preserve on a more regular basis and make connections with the beauty and wonder of the place on a deeper level. We are so excited to partner with Visalia Unified School Districts again to provide an expanded program for K-2 afterschool students again next year!

Best Partners - The Source LGBT Center, PFLAG, and the Pride Lions

We were so happy to partner with The Source LGBT+ Center, the Visalia Pride Lions, and PFLAG of Tulare-Kings Counties to host Outside Pride again this year! This event is always so much fun for us, and we appreciate all of the support and partnership that we receive from these organizations every year! This year was extra special because the Visalia Pride Lions were able to once again donate a bench to Kaweah Oaks Preserve, in honor of Patrick Davis, who was the original mastermind behind the concept of Outside Pride and spearheaded this project to make this event possible! We are so grateful for all the hard work put in from the members of these organizations, and from the volunteers and participants who came to the event this year.

And a special thank you has to go out to those who provided and grilled the delicious BBQ lunch that we all enjoyed after a long morning of work on the preserve!

Best Dressed - Our Volunteers!

And of course - we have to give the best dressed award to our volunteers, who generously gave up their time, energy, and dreams of keeping their clothes clean, to help us with our various stewardship activities at the Dry Creek Nursery and Kaweah Oaks Preserve this year! Thanks to this volunteer work, we were able to propagate and grow thousands of CA native plants in the nursery, remove many pounds of trash and thousands of invasive plants from the preserves, and replant dozens of baby Valley Oak trees and other native plants to restore the space. Without their help, this work would not only take us more time, it would be impossible. So all of us here at SRT would like to extend a HUGE thank you to our volunteers for helping us continue to manage and restore these beautiful landscapes across Tulare County!