We are excited to share a significant milestone for the Spinning Salmon Project: the launch of Year 4 of student-driven data collection in partnership with the GEAR UP STEM Rural Valley Partnership! This collaboration is energizing students with 21st-century tools, empowering them to explore salmon ecology while supporting GEAR UP’s core goals:

As part of California’s 30×30 initiative—a state-wide effort to conserve 30% of our land and coastal waters by 2030—Biodiversity Day has become a weeklong celebration where both professional and budding naturalists from across the state come together to document as much biodiversity as they can by contributing to community science.

“Bye, Spaghetti!” waved one high schooler as a tiny Chinkook salmon, so named Spaghetti, swam out of a plastic cup and into the murky Sacramento River. Across the boat ramp at Riverbend Park in Oroville, students said their farewells to the alevin in their own cups. This was the last chance for students to get an up close of the fish they spent raising in their classroom over the last 6 weeks.

After 4+ years of collaboration and intensive project work, the Our Forests Project is entering a phase of analysis, product development, and sharing with a wide range of audiences. Our Forests is an NSF DRK-12-funded Youth-focused Community and Citizen Science (YCCS) collaborative project between our center and our community partner – Sierra Streams Institute.

In May, the Center’s Youth Education Program Manager, Peggy Harte, joined teachers from throughout northern California as they came together to celebrate and share their learnings as participants in the year-long professional development program, H.E.A.L. (Health, Environmental Awareness and Literacy). 

Starting a collaborative community and citizen science project with high schools is no small feat. Try starting it during the pandemic. That’s what we did with the Center’s collaboration with GEAR UP STEM Rural Valley Partnership Spinning Salmon in the Classroom project. After managing a year of distance learning in 2021 and piloting in-person content in 2022, we had so much we were excited to do this year. 

It’s a cold February morning at River Bend Park in Oroville. We’re standing with UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences’ Carson Jeffres, waiting patiently for the bus to arrive from Red Bluff High School. A truck towing a boat backs down the boat ramp where we’re waiting to meet the high school students that have participated in the Spinning Salmon in the Classroom project this winter.