Youth Conservation Corps teams up with hatchery to build outdoor classroom

Thump, thump, thump.

Pounding rhythms echo out from the forested land east of Creston. It’s coming from a cleared space in the trees where loose dirt is being tamped down around short wooden posts.

Flathead Reservation Youth Conservation Corps members are creating a low fence around what will be the climbing and crawling area of the Creston Fish Hatchery’s outdoor classroom.

The Nature Explore Classroom is one of two that received $29,000 in grants from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to install the classrooms. The other one is being installed at the national training center in West Virginia.

Denise Wagner of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the installations will be used as showcases for Nature Explore Classrooms.

Both areas are unique.

“What’s unique about this (Creston) one is it’s in the woods,” Wagner said. “Theirs (West Virginia) is really different because it’s an area on a campus.”

Nature Explore was created in 1998 through a partnership between the Arbor Day Foundation and the Dimensions Educational Research Foundation. There are 100 certified Nature Explore Classrooms across the United States. The purpose of the classrooms are to give people a safe outdoor space where they can interact and connect with the natural world.

The classroom’s purpose aligns itself with the goals of YCC, which Wagner said are to connect teenagers aged 15-18 with the natural world and expose them to potential future careers.

“It’s to get kids out to learn about nature, work skills, they learn how to work together,” Wagner said. “It gives them a taste of what’s available, you know, different job opportunities, we have them doing a mix of things.”

Flathead Reservation’s YCC has done work on the Bison Range, at bird sanctuaries, done trail maintenance, noxious weed control, reptile assessment, and worked with the fisheries biologists at the hatchery.

And the Creston Fish Hatchery’s history of working with YCC is part of the reason the hatchery received the Nature Explore Classroom grant in the first place.

A crooked balance beam, different sized stump steps and colored scarves will complete the area six of 12 YCC students were working on Wednesday morning.

The space is designed to stimulate coordination and creativity in kids from third-grade and higher. Nine other learning spaces are also in the works, and include a music area, a crafts area and a water area.

YCC will help install all of them as part of an eight-week program that started July 11. They began working at the Creston Fish Hatchery on July 16 and will be there for two weeks working on the Nature Explore Classroom. Six weeks of the program are designated for conservation and resource work on the Flathead Reservation.

It’s the third year of the YCC program sponsored by the Creston National Fish Hatchery, the Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribes Natural Resources Department from the Flathead Reservation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Fisheries and Habitat Conservation Program and Salish Kootenai College.

This year they had 50 applicants to the program and accepted 12 crew members and two crew leaders to participate.

St. Ignatius 17-year-old Emily Mccrea is in her second year with the program. Next year she wants to be a crew leader. She said the first year, it was tough adjusting to working outdoors, and this year she loves it.

So far they’ve picked camas bulbs for tribal elders to use in a traditional dinner, cleaned up river campsites and are working on the classroom as part of this year’s program.

By the end of their two weeks at the fish hatchery, the classroom will be almost completed.

“I like doing this job, I like preserving land,” Mccrea said. “Keeping our land clean, how it should be.”