Emma Parker, SBC class of 2010, searches for tadpoles last April in a vernal pool near Piney River in Amherst County. Photo by Mike Hayslett.
Sweet Briar College’s biology department has received a $15,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to support an outreach program called “Schools for Pools.”
The program’s overarching goal is to increase awareness of the need for wetlands protection, particularly vernal pools, by connecting with kindergarten through 12th-grade students and their teachers from four regional school districts. Using teacher workshops, classroom instruction and directed field trips, experts will guide students and teachers in projects to find and study vernal pools in their local areas.
The field activities and classroom lessons will be age-appropriate and are designed to meet Virginia’s Standards of Learning. But “Schools for Pools” creator, Sweet Briar naturalist-in-residence Michael Hayslett, said the program is also about encouraging the participants to “adopt” the vernal pools and become ambassadors for them in their home communities. The plan calls for the groups to present their findings to their local governments and to seek media coverage.
Vernal pools are seasonal wetlands that a variety of animal and plant species – some of them rare – depend on to survive. The ponds typically fill up in fall and winter, creating vital amphibian breeding grounds in spring, before drying out in summer.
Frogs and salamanders that live in the surrounding woods trek a half-mile or more every year to the same pool where they were born to lay eggs and raise tadpoles. Migratory waterfowl, deer and other local fauna also rely on the ponds.
Although these wetlands’ ecological importance to the species they support is well understood by biologists, the average Central Virginian may be unaware that they exist, much less that they should be valued and preserved, Hayslett said. Despite statewide legal protection, many are destroyed, often unwittingly, by filling, logging or pollution.
“The surprising thing is how many there are in this area,” Hayslett said. “They’re really quite common when you know where to look, and when to look and how to look.”
Hayslett and Sweet Briar will work with several partners on the “Schools for Pools” project, including Boxley Materials Co., Bedford County Economic Development Authority, Lynchburg College’s Claytor Nature Study Center, the Central Virginia Chapter of the Virginia Master Naturalist Program and Appomattox Court House National Historical Park.
Most are providing access to property where vernal pools are found. Others, such as the Central Virginia Master Naturalists, are volunteering time and expertise on the field trips. Participants, whose schools were selected for their proximity to wetland sites, will be students and teachers from Temperance Elementary in Amherst County, Buckingham Middle, Appomattox Middle and Staunton River High School in Bedford County.
Hayslett will provide in-class instruction at the schools, and will be assisted in the field by VMN volunteers – including four Sweet Briar students who are completing the organization’s 40-hour training program. Each class will take three field trips. One in late fall will follow the classroom visit. Students will return to the same site in the spring to observe the seasonal changes, and they will make a final excursion to a new site to compare how one wetland differs from another.
The program’s third component, the teacher training workshops, will be held at Sweet Briar. One will be held in December and another in early spring. Teachers may choose to attend either one.
Hayslett is scheduling the fall field trips, a process that was postponed due to a delay in the EPA funding disbursement. However, he’s been coordinating with the schools in the meantime and is confident that that all four trips will be scheduled before the Thanksgiving break.
The spotted salamander is typical of species that rely on seasonal wetlands to reproduce each year. Photo by Suzanne Ramsey.
