Nicodemus Wilderness Project -- Global Registry of Apprentice Ecologists

All my life I've been around plants and animals, and growing up in the country was not any help. But as time passed I moved to the city and was shocked to the difference. Although we are only 20 minutes away, the difference in the environment created a gasping expression. As my senior year at Delcastle Vo-Tech High School was beginning to close, I decided to end this year with a bang. I applied and was accepted for a Bio-tech position. In this Bio-Tech class myself & the Animal Club of Delcastle engaged in a clean-up through a natural water steam that flowed through Delcastle.

Before starting this process we discussed that this event will just lead in a chain of events that Delcastle will try to uphold every year until this stream is better than ever. We set goal and obligations that we as a team will uphold. During this time the steam was filthy, the water turned to a mucky green and brown color. There was trash that blocked the stream & natural plants dying in the process. So to clean u as much as possible in the short amount of time given to us, we decided to slit into teams. Team Alpa and Team Gold were the names and we were trying to make this process as fun as possible. So to engage the students that believe this was a drag, we decided to make it a race. The smiles on the students as they found wagons and wooden boards, were just about as shocked our faces were that those materials were in the streams.

As a team we all spent 2 days cleaning and restoring the natural stream to it's old self, pulling out bottles, cans, plastic wraps, wagons, bones, and even tires. With the help of the school we transported the trash to the correct areas. In this water stream out teacher Mr. Brian Gross helped teach the underclassmen about the natural plants and shown us the correct way to eat a cat tail.

Throughout this whole process I realized how people take their natural resorces for granted. Its so easy for people to throw their trash on the ground rather than taking it it a trash can or dumpster. So to prevent this from happening again we put more trash cans outside and we will keep this new tradition alive by going back to the stream and making sure it looks better each year