Winter/Spring 2012 - Roaring Fork Conservancy

WATERSHED EDUCATION
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Summer Explorations
Each summer Roaring Fork Conservancy takes people to unique places to teach about rivers.
From top left: Middle school students studying bug life
on the Colorado River near Moab, Utah; learning about
riparian habitat on the Roaring Fork River during a
Northstar Float; Ty Bellmore of the Town of Carbondale
explaining the Carbondale ditch system; participants
rallying at the River Stewards Float; and Kevin Lusk of the
Twin Lakes Company discussing Lost Man Dam. Photos by Tim
O’Keefe & Sarah Johnson
Sarah Woods joins team
In December 2010, Sarah Woods
joined Roaring Fork Conservancy
as Director of Philanthropy. Not
new to the organization, Sarah had
volunteered as the co-chair for River
Rendezvous the past two years.
Sarah is from Mississippi, graduated
from University of Arkansas and then
lived in Los Angeles before moving to Basalt in 1993 with
her husband Robert, who has been a volunteer for River
Rendezvous for 12 years. Sarah has endless energy and lots
of new, fresh ideas on fundraising.
Once Sarah saw river education classes in action, she
decided to start our Children’s Water Education Fund as
she saw a definite need to continue teaching our Valley
school children the importance of keeping our waters
healthy and clean.
Sarah is responsible not only for fundraising for our
programs, but also for securing the donations and grants
needed to build the River Center. This monumental
project is underway and we are searching for a lead gift
partner that will allow us to begin building in 2012. We
currently have more than two million dollars raised. Sarah
has opened new doors for the River Center project that
had not been considered in the past and we look forward
to many successes in the next year.
Please join us in welcoming Sarah to “our family” and be
on the lookout for her call as she seeks donors for the River
Center to keep our programs alive and prospering.
Empowering ‘Teachers’ Multiplies Educational Impact
by Tim O’Keefe, Roaring Fork Conservancy
How do you take an educational
staff of 2½ and teach 45,000
residents, 10,000 school
children, and more than
100,000 visitors to the Roaring
Fork Watershed? You empower
others to help you. For the
past 10 years, Roaring Fork
Conservancy has multiplied
its educational efforts by
training other organizations and
individuals to teach others to
become river protectors. When
we teach other ‘teachers’, our
reach often goes well beyond
the 7,500 students and adults we
directly contact each year.
Below are some of the programs that help us reach tens
of thousands of people each year:
Teaching raft guides about the Roaring Fork Watershed
this summer. Tim O’Keefe
River Guide School
The old joke goes, “How do you know when a raft guide
is lying? His lips are moving.” We started the River Guide
School in 2003 to counter that adage and give commercial
raft guides something wholesome and relevant to talk about.
Hundreds of guides have received our trainings over the
past nine years. With thousands of locals and tourists rafting
local rivers each summer, raft guides have a captive audience
on the resource we are working to protect. In 2011, we
worked with six commercial whitewater rafting companies
to conduct three-hour on-water trainings with 100 guides.
Each training covered basics such as watersheds 101, current
water issues, Colorado River plumbing, Colorado water law,
and riparian habitat protection. After the float, each guide
receives encouragement to learn more about the rivers they
are running so that they can leave their guests with a more
well-rounded and insightful experience and potentially put
more money in their own pockets.
Colorado Water 101 Trainings
Our education staff also works with like-minded
organizations to train their staff and volunteers in the
essentials of Colorado water. Each year we teach 15
seasonal naturalists at the Aspen Center for Environmental
Studies about how water works in Colorado. Many of these
naturalists have lived and worked in places other than
Colorado, and our training underscores the importance
of water to the arid west. These trainings enhance their
naturalist guided tours on local mountains with visitors from
all over the world.
We’ve also taught many of The Forest Conservancy’s
volunteer rangers who work on the White River National
Forest. Through our trainings they have learned about
watersheds, riparian habitat, water rights, and roving
interpretation. These volunteers interact with thousands of
hikers and visitors throughout the watershed each summer
and fall and are now armed with useful information and
maps about our local water resources.
Certified Interpretive Guide
Training
In 2007, Roaring Fork
Conservancy invested in
certifying our staff through
the National Association for
Interpretation. Interpretation is
a mission-based communication
process that forges emotional and
intellectual connections between
the interests of the audience and
the meanings inherent in the
resource. This is a technical way
of saying that we help people
connect to and understand
our rivers. The certification
trainings have improved our programs and allowed us
to teach interpretive techniques to interpretive guides,
rangers, exhibit designers, and historians at a dozen other
organizations.
River Watch Trainings
Each year Colorado River Watch trains teachers and
citizen stream teams in water quality sampling protocols
and techniques to bolster the network of sampling around
Colorado. Roaring Fork Conservancy oversees the
largest network of monitoring sites (30) within the River
Watch network. Each fall Chad Rudow, Roaring Fork
Conservancy’s Water Quality Coordinator, joins other
instructors in teaching River Watch protocols to educators
from around the state. He also offers local trainings for
citizen Stream Team volunteers and school groups as needed.
If your group or company is interested in having Roaring
Fork Conservancy conduct a training, please contact Tim
Children’s Water Education
Fund raises $25,000
Launched in April 2011, the
Children’s Water
Children’s Water Education
Education Fund Fund has raised $25,000
to-date to support Roaring
Fork Conservancy educational efforts in our schools.
Contributions to this fund help:
• provide scholarships and funding support for fieldbased
experiences for about 6,000 students each year
• provide needed scientific equipment such as microscopes,
kick-nets and water quality monitoring kits
• ensure that future decision-makers have a solid understanding
of rivers and water.
Join those making a difference for our children by
contributing to the Children’s Water Education Fund at
www.roaringfork.org.
RIVER CURRENTS ~ Winter/Spring 2012 RIVER CURRENTS ~ Winter/Spring 2012
WATERSHED EDUCATION
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