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Not just another day in the life of staff at the Lower Great Lakes Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office and Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge. We were excited to once again participate in a multi-day environmental education event at the Silo City "Holistic Urban Land Management (HULM) Lab“ in Buffalo, New York. Now in its second year, this program was created on the very popular and historic grain elevator lands, which locals call Silo City, through a grant to work with students in their local environments, and to demonstrate the possibilities of holistic urban regeneration. The initiative works to teach students about aquatic and terrestrial land conservation, including lessons on freshwater fish biology and how biologists study fish and their aquatic habitats using different field techniques and equipment which sometimes includes a live electrofishing demonstration!
Iroquois Park Ranger Logan led an art-based activity encouraging students to create real and abstract drawings in a nature journal to express their observations and understanding of fish and nature from their time at Silo City. Once their sketches were complete, the high schoolers were then challenged to take all of the images and tie them together into one final drawing for later display.
The students had a great time! "We got such great feedback from the students about your last session – they loved it!" said Silo City staff member Maris Grundy following the first fall session. The students were curious about the wide variety of fish collected by biologists and enjoyed seeing rainbow trout, brown bullhead, alewife and bass, just to name a few. Although a fair amount of the students had some personal experience shore fishing along the Niagara River, many had never handled a fish before. It was amazing to see these high schoolers be engaged and asking questions of the staff instead of just being on their phones. Some were squeamish at first but then kept coming back to the cooler to touch another fish!
In the afternoon, Maris Grundy and Josh Smith from Silo City led students in learning how to grow American Plum (Prunus americana) from seeds. The students planted seeds in air prune boxes, where the seeds will germinate and grow until the future seedling plants need to be transplanted into larger plant and tree pot containers. The air prune box is a container with holes or slots in its walls which supports the development of robust, fibrous root structures by limiting the taproot typical of native trees and instead, encouraging lateral root growth. This technique also protects against seed browse by animals, common in this cityscape. After two years of growth, the young trees will be planted around Buffalo, New York and surrounding areas.
Thirty students from McKinley and Riverside High Schools participated this fall and a second session at Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge is scheduled for the spring. The students will have an opportunity to view nature trails at the refuge and try their hand at fishing.
