Bringing Back Biodiversity: Students Restore Native Plants to Twin Rivers Ranch Preserve

Excited chatter dances along the breeze as 60 science students from Griffin Middle School make their way down the path to Twin Rivers Ranch Preserve, located at the head of Oakland Bay near Shelton. This is no ordinary field trip, and these are no ordinary students. For the next seven weeks, they are officially restoration ecologists in the field surveying native plants and increasing biodiversity at this 125-acre conservation area that was once a grazing pasture for cattle.

Working Together for Conservation’s Future

A late September day marks the first of two field trips hosted through a partnership between Griffin Middle School, Washington Native Plant Society (WNPS), and Capitol Land Trust (CLT). These organizations combined their complimentary skills to co-deliver WNPS’s Youth Ecology Education through Restoration (YEER) program, empowering more than 300 Griffin students to plant a whopping 1,065 native plants to date.

Such efforts are not only a win for the ecosystem at Twin Rivers Ranch Preserve, they are also beneficial to an emerging cohort of young people newly educated to care for the environment.

“Learning outdoors is much better for them,” explains one Griffin counselor. “It’s great to get them putting into practice what they learn in the classroom.”

It would seem today’s restoration ecologists agree, with a student named Adalynne observing, “Whenever I imagine how a field trip is going to be, it always ends up being better.”

Just as it takes many partnerships to conserve land in the first place, it takes strong partnerships to build a community who can carry conservation work forward. Twin Rivers Ranch Preserve was conserved by CLT in 2010 because of the two estuaries, wetlands, and forests located on the property. Now, the incredible property occasionally hosts outdoor experiences that connect people to the work of conservation—as well as the benefits.

WNPS volunteer Patricia says, “Partnering with CLT in the YEER program introduces the idea of land conservation and restoration to our youth. Having a positive experience in nature on conservation lands at a young age will hopefully motivate these young people to support land conservation and restoration efforts in their futures. Not to mention inspiring them to seek out nature experiences, which can improve their physical and mental wellbeing.”

A Day in the Life of a Student Restoration Ecologist

The group kicks things off with a welcome circle led by WNPS’s Janneke Peterson and CLT outreach and education coordinator, Sarah Croston. Their expert guidance along with WNPS volunteers, parent chaperones, and Griffin staff underscores that this is not just a youth project but a multi-generational community effort. In fact, one parent named Adam happened to do some of the GIS work mapping invasive species at this very site.

“Biodiversity” is the word of the day, and the students help define it as well as the goal of their work here: to increase the biodiversity of their restoration site when they return for planting. They then break into smaller groups to begin an activity called Each One, Teach One where the students are assigned a native plant species, then teach the others in their group about it.

This is followed by surveying small reference plots where native plants are already well established. “Are these edible?” one student asks while closely examining blue elderberries. “They are if cooked properly,” a chaperone explains, adding they know someone who used to make jam from them.

Numerous native plants including Pacific madrone, sword ferns, thimbleberry, and western red cedar are identified at the reference sites. In contrast, the restoration site is dominated by nonnative pasture grass punctuated with nonnative thistle. However, the students find more than just plants at the site, with two praying mantises soon stealing the show. “Well, that was awesome!” exclaims Ellie as she takes a turn holding one of the docile green insects.

For the next several weeks the students engage in a high-quality science curriculum taught by their classroom teachers, including a paper that details their restoration plan. They return in November to put those plans into action.

Upon arriving at Twin Rivers for the second time, students grab their work gloves and receive a brief tool safely lesson from Janneke, who then asks about their goal for the day. The students reply that they will be planting native species to increase biodiversity at the site. “How will that help?” Janneke asks. The students identify that once the plants grow, they will provide habitat and food for other species, “a food web!” they enthusiastically say.

Next comes a planting demonstration observed by not only the students but also more than a dozen bald eagles who are here for the chum salmon running up Cranberry Creek, which borders today’s restoration area. The demonstration focuses on high-quality planting.

Getting it Done

With that, the students-turned-restoration-ecologists set to work digging holes, planting native species like Oregon grape, snowberry, shore pine, nootka rose, and oceanspray, and finally mulching around them. “There, you almost got it, put some elbow grease into it,” one student says encouragingly. Nearby, another informs their partner, “That’s deep enough, we can plant now.” Still others are on the quest for mulch, dutifully shoveled by those already finished planting. As Adalynne fills a wheelbarrow for her classmates, she proudly declares, “I like to push myself to my limits to find out what I’m capable of.”

Indeed, the 60 students planted and mulched 350 native plants over the course of the day.

On that note, there is one last thing to do before the students depart for Griffin Middle School, and that is to visit the estuary to view spawning salmon. The students cheer in unison as one gets trapped in shallow water. “Go! Go! Go! Go!” they chant, erupting in joyous applause once the salmon frees itself and heads upstream. “I wish I could lay out here all night and see what happens,” Maggie laments as the group makes their way back toward the buses. “Did you ever think how cool it would be to be a bird seeing all this from above?”

With such soaring sentiments in mind, it is clear that strong partnerships between Griffin, WNPS, and CLT have not only made a lasting, positive impact upon the landscape, but also on the hearts and minds of the students who have invested in this special place. Since the land is protected in perpetuity, the native plants established through this year’s YEER program can grow and perhaps even shade the future children of the students who contributed so much on these autumn days.