As the fall season starts to wind itself toward winter’s slow amble, Audubon Rockies would like to take this moment to thank all the contributing volunteers that made another season a success of working with regional students at Four Mile Ranch.
Totaling well over 1,000 hours of dedication, the volunteers who step forward each fall to lead field trips through the beautiful upland and bottomland forests at the ranch truly make the program “tick.” Without their support and willingness to share their expertise and time, the program would simply not exist. We’d also like to extend our appreciation to our partners at San Juan Mountains Association, as they assisted with curriculum development, instruction and participation in the program.
This year, we welcomed several new programs to the mix, including extending opportunities to pre-K students at Seeds of Learning, two small middle school groups from Ignacio and Pagosa Peak Open School (PPOS), and provided historical schools (PSES, PPOS and Our Savior Lutheran School) with some new grade-level content for learners in kindergarten through fourth grade.
We hosted approximately 850 students from the region over the course of about six weeks, instilling foundational connections and memories in nature that we hope lead to more conservation successes in the future.
Programs at Four Mile Ranch revolve around ecological concepts that build on one another each visit. As a culmination this year, fourth-graders participated in a bioblitz, creating a biotic index, in a portion of the ranch’s bottomland that we haven’t operated in for several years.
Students effectively identified 21 species of plants, tallied 106 terrestrial insect observations, recorded 108 mammal and bird sightings, and logged 16 different species of macroinvertebrates (water-dwelling animals lacking backbones) in Four Mile Creek.
In the process, students learned how meaningful it is to connect to the environment around us, further building a sense of place as we make observations in the natural world.
Lastly, we would like to thank the owners and caretakers of Four Mile ranch for hosting our programs at a remarkably beautiful location only 5 miles away from downtown Pagosa Springs.
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