Blog
Browse this page for blog postings related to middle- and high-school-teacher Adventure Learning workshops taking place across Idaho. Use the widgets to the right (or at bottom of this page, for smaller devices) to filter blog posts.
Silver Valley Restoration
As someone who has lived and worked in the Siver Valley for over 20 years I learned a lot of new and useful information about the work being done to restore many areas of the Silver Valley.What is hard to wrap around my mind is that the area of the contamination actually goes from Mullan to where the Spokane River dumps into the Columbia River. This means that all the waste is going through Lake Coeur d'Alene. We took a road trip up Nine mile Creek to observe the Waste Consolidation Area where they have currently moved 259 thousand cubic yards of waste and are still far from finished. ... more
Conquer or Nurture?
The Big Burn is one of many great examples of our atitude toward Nature. What a hassle to cross a swollen river in the Spring or after a rainfall. Solution: Build a bridge - until the 100 year storm washes out the bridge. Solution: Build a bigger bridge! Wether the Benewah Creek site, Burke Canyon, Bunker Hill, Portneuf River, or The Big Burn, we continue to learn more about our relationship with our environment. From Vardis Fisher's "Mountain Man" published in 1965 relating back to the historical viewpoint of early 1800's mountain men, "The whole Western country would soon be overrun by... more
Ecosystem services and water testing in Pocatello
The ecosystem services I value the most are the cultural services. I do a lot of hiking and a lot of nature photography, so my watershed provides me with recreation opportunities. I also use our watershed for examples in my classes, and to help me learn more about the natural world around us. The photo shows an area where I was hiking just two days ago.
For about ten years, I used water quality testing as a major part of the sophomore biology classes I taught (I don’t teach those classes anymore). Every October and April, we would go to the Portneuf River and test a number of... more
Bunker Hill Superfund Site Article
I'm originally from southern Idaho, and I'm only 30 years old, so I did not know a lot about Bunker Hill or its effects on local habitat and organisms. I've been reading a fair amount of articles Bunker Hill over the past couple of summers and incorporated this reading into my biology classes at Timberlake High School. I feel that it's important for my students to know what happened basically in their own backyard, so we can learn from mistakes. Some of them get excited about ecological conservation, while others give the teenager "who cares" response. Even though that can be very... more
The Big Burn
I'm especially excited that you all get to visit the Pulaski Trail today!! If you haven't read The Big Burn by Timonthy Egan, it is a great book! Not only does it talk about Ed Pulaski but it has a lot to do with Teddy Roosevelt and how the Forest Service came to be.
As you hike the trail and see pictures of the devastation, think about what Pulaski and his fellow fire fighters must have gone through.
What kind of impact did this fire have the the ecosystems of the area? With around 3 million acres of devastation it must have a huge impact on the ecosystem. With... more
Tuesday
Hello again!
Today we are driving through the Silver Valley up to Burke Canyon with Rebecca Stevens, the Program Manager and Restoration Coordinator of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe Lake Management Department. We’ll tour three mine clean-up sites, the EPA Repository, and the Sunshine Mine Disaster Memorial. Our discussions for the day will focus on the history of mining in the region, its effects on the watershed, the Bunker Hill Superfund site, and the collaborative remediation work being done. You can find some information about basin-wide restoration at:... more