Students from Allen Academy in Bryan are learning you are never too young to help with conservation efforts.
Earlier this month, the students traveled down to Baytown to harvest marsh grass as part of a yearlong project with the Galveston Bay Foundation: Get Hip to Habitat. For the past five years, Allen Academy has participated in the project by pulling marsh grass, taking it back to their campus to tend, and helping plant it in wetlands at the end of the year.
“For every 50 plants taken, we see a yield of about 500 plants. It’s a great way for us to easily grow marsh grass and have students help restore the habitat. The education program works with the conservation program to determine which areas need restoring,” says Cindy Wilems, director of education for Galveston Bay Foundation.
The past two years the replanting has taken place in Galveston in the spring. The students will come down for a second field trip with a truckload of marsh grass that they carefully cultivated all year.
“They’ll plant the grass and do educational activities like finding fish and water testing with electronic tech rather than the mechanical methods they use at school. We might go birding to identify local birds – it’s really whatever they want,” says Wilems.
The program isn’t just about the field trips; throughout the year, students monitor the water quality of the kiddie pools that house their grass and learn about the importance of wetland conservation. In December, the Galveston Bay Foundation will come do a classroom workshop about engineering principles related to slowing down erosion.
The ultimate goal is to spread the world about the importance of wetlands. Students learn how wetlands are habitats and hatching ground for a variety of animals, help prevent flooding while replenishing groundwater, take carbon out of the atmosphere, and much more. Through Get Hip to Habitat, students get to play their part in giving back.
“Get Hip to Habitat is one of our longer-standing programs and one of our favorites: teachers and students love to do it,” says Wilems.
