Students Get Their Hands Dirty

REDLANDS>> This year, high school students from Rialto and Citrus Valley High School participated in the Inland Empire Resource Conservation District’s SLEWS program. The Student and Landowner Education and Watershed Stewardship Program is a program developed by the Center for Land-Based Learning to provide habitat restoration activities for landowners and promote a stewardship ethic in students. Twice a year, students visit a pre-selected site to perform field work and learn about conservation topics. Alongside mentors who are experts in the field of conservation, the students explore future school and job opportunities in the fields of agriculture and resource conservation. In October and February, students from Rialto High School visited Huerta Del Valle Community Garden, managed by Maria Alonso and Arthur Levine, in Ontario, CA. The students built a rain capture system to collect and recycle rainwater from the room of the HDV’s greenhouse. Students also helped compost a truckload of food waste that HDV collected from sites throughout the community, including schools and local businesses. The students later returned to the site to plant fruit trees and perform an insect inventory to monitor the health of the garden. In November, students from Citrus Valley High School visited Highland Springs Resort, an organic lavender farm located in Cherry Valley, CA. Tina Kummerle, farm manager, explained to the students that the resort operates its farms under a no-kill policy, meaning they cannot use pesticides or traps to deter pests. To help control pests on the property, the students built and installed several owl boxes and raptor perches to attract raptors to the area to hunt ground squirrels and other rodents. The students also planted a native plant hedgerow on the property to attract pollinators, provide native habitat, and serve as a windbreak. In January, Citrus Valley students returned to the site to help perform a native seeding of the area that was burnt in the 2016 Bogart Fire. Prior to the fire, the site consisted primarily of Ripgut brome, and other invasive grasses that provide poor habitat for wildlife and increase wildfire frequency. Students hand-seeded one acre while learning about native plants and fire ecology. The SLEWS program provides students with valuable, hands-on resource conservation experience while providing a great benefit to landowners. The program is in its second year at the IERCD, a special district tasked with preserving and managing the natural resources within San Bernardino County, and has received great recognition from teachers, mentors, and landowners involved in the program.