PRI Partners With CFI and Others to Bring Service-Learning to Youth

Recognizing the incredible value of service-learning activities in environmental education, this year PRI has been actively expanding its audience to include high school, middle school and even elementary school children. Since 2005, we've been working on a project to integrate a service component into the curriculum of Canyonlands Field Institute, an educational onon-profit organization in Moab and long-time partner of PRI. Through this project, which has been supported by a grant tawarded to PRI from the EPA, we have engaged over 130 students and teachers enrolled in CFI programs. Participants have cut back tamarisk, removed cheat grass and other annual weeds, seeded treatment areas with native grasses and planted willows along Mary Jane Creek in Professor Valley. And the best part was that students said they had fun, even pulling cheat grass!
We also had eigth-graders from California Waldorf School, a class of fifth through seventh grade students associated with a program at University of Denver, and a group of Girl Scouts from Salt Lake City participating in projects. Students enthusiastically dug out tamarisk stumps in Arches National Park, removed diffuse knapweed in Castle Valley, cut out russian olive along the Colorado River and weeded at Ken's Lake BLM Recreation Area near Moab.