Hat Creek Youth Initiative Underway

  

California Trout is pleased to announce that the inaugural year of the Hat Creek Youth Initiative is underway. The Hat Creek Youth Initiative (HCYI), developed by California Trout, and supported with funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (nfwf.org), was designed to engage local youth in the restoration of Hat Creek. Through paid employment, students from the Fall River Joint Unified School District, will receive meaningful natural resource mentorship from resource professionals, and tangible conservation job-readiness skills.  The HCYI will also engage youth in a meaningful and hands-on conservation project that is going on in their own back yard: the restoration of the Hat Creek Wild Trout Area in North-east California.  Students this summer will be completing important pre-project monitoring and baseline studies that will help researchers and California Trout in the restoration plan for Hat Creek. The six students from the Fall River Unified School District and their Crew Leader, have completed two weeks of work so far this summer. Read on to find out what the HCYI is up to!

Week 1:

Students spent their first week of work completing a Training Week.  Students had office training time at the Lions Club in Fall River Mills where they learned about: the history of California Trout as an organization, watersheds, the basics of stream-bank restoration, the riparian corridor, and the ecology of the Hat Creek area. The week was an amazing opportunity for the students to engage with the extremely knowledgeable natural resource professionals that live in the Burney/Fall River Mills and Hat Creek area.


Our first guest speakers were from the Pit River Tribe, where elders Bill George and Cecilia spoke to the youth about the cultural significance of Hat Creek. We learned about Cultural Monitoring, Cultural uses of plants, and about the importance of Hat Creek culturally and historically.

Our next speaker was Todd Sloat, the Watershed Coordinator with the Fall River Resource Conservation District. Todd is an active member of the Hat Regional Advisory Committee, which is a technical board that advises and provides scientific feedback about the Restoration of Hat Creek. Todd spoke to the youth about previous stream-bank revetment at Hat Creek; how to remember the difference between Sedges/Grasses/Rushes; and the path he took in his career to get where he is today. As the football coach for many of the kids, it was great for the students to hear what he does in his day job!



On the Wednesday of the first training week, we had a great chat from Claude Singleton, who is the Recreation Planner for the Bureau of Land Management. Claude spoke to the youth about the varied careers and pathways that one can take in the Natural Resource fields. As Claude pointed out, it takes all types of people from office managers; computer specialists; foresters; recreation planners; biologists; firefighters, engineers, and the list goes on. With Claude's extensive local knowledge from working with the BLM in the area, the students were able to learn about a lot of the different projects that the BLM does, as well as his own career pathway that led him to where he is today.

 

Students reading their Training Manuals at Hat Creek

Our last day of the training week brought out field training with Jeff Cook, the principal of Spring Rivers Ecological Sciences, and an extremely knowledgeable researcher of the Hat Creek and spring-fed creek systems. Jeff's talk brought the students along the right side of the stream, where we learned about the aquatic vegetation in Hat Creek and the role it plays in the food-web for macro-invertebrates and fish. Jeff also spoke about the geology of Hat Creek; and shared with the group how biologists complete mark-recapture studies with turtles and other animals.

Our last speaker was Kit Mullen, the District Ranger for the Hat Creek Ranger District of the USFS. Kit's talk was incredibly informative, and the stories from her travels and work all over the country was definitely a highlight of the week. Kit shared the history of the USFS, fire-ecology, timber in the area, and her many stories from working in Alaska as a back-country hunting guide...wow! We all can't wait for Kit to come back out this summer to do some hands-on learning with the group, and to hear some more stories.

A huge thanks to all of our guest speakers that we've had so far, and stay tuned for more information about the work being done by the 2013 Hat Creek Youth Initiative!