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58 °F 5 Day Forecast Wednesday, October 22, 2003 Today's News | Classifieds | Autos | Homes | Jobs | Tempo | eSouthernOregon | Home Delivery SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA Newspaper in Education Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find a Rental Place an ad eSouthernOregon Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar CUSTOMER SERVICE Frequent Questions Advertising Information Home Delivery Employment Contact Us Media Kit Network Affiliate Email Story to a Friend October 16, 2003 Walker Elementary School fifth-graders, from left, Alexandria Barsekian, Sean Savard, Maie Raymond, Alicia Rendall and Alex Palamito watch a stream take form in a simulator at Ashland�s North Mountain Park. Mail Tribune / Roy Musitelli Kids build stream to learn The North Mountain Park Nature Center in Ashland offers hands-on experience for kids to understand the life cycle of the chinook salmon By JOHN DARLING for the Mail Tribune ASHLAND � It’s one thing to make school kids sit still and listen to how a stream works and what salmon and steelhead need to stay alive and spawn in the Rogue River and Bear Creek systems. It’s quite another to let them build a stream, then run water through it and see if it works. Using a "stream table" donated by the U.S. Forest Service, Ashland kids are visiting North Mountain Park Nature Center, rolling up their sleeves and — just like Mother Nature herself — digging stream beds in sand and supplying them with all the elements crucial to fish survival: pools, side channels, shade, gravel, riffles, logs, boulders, undercut banks and root wads. After a quick lecture on the Nature Center porch, Walker Elementary fifth-graders went at it with glee, digging stones and wood out of boxes and fashioning them around a double channel stream. They turned on water, studied its trek down the sloping bed and learned some of nature’s tricks. "They’re learning to do what it took nature millions of years to do — using stream flow to create channels with pools for fish to hide and rest in, and obstacles, so that gravel can build up, which they use for spawning," said retired biology teacher and volunteer Diane Johnson of Ashland. Advertisement In preparation for the project, Forest Service rangers this summer taught Ashland teachers about stream functioning and restoration, said Linda Chesney of the Nature Center. Rangers help monitor restoration of the much-degraded Bear Creek, which runs beside North Mountain Park. The main work has been the creation of rock weirs to slow the stream down, create shade and allow spawning gravel to accumulate, said center co-director Kari Gies. To cap off the lesson, children learn to sample nearby Bear Creek water for its oxygen level (usually on the low end of being able to sustain life) and get "hang time" to play and rest at the creek — an essential and usually overlooked part of experiencing a stream, said Gies. Then the children write a story from the point of view of fish, detailing how they would try to survive the swim upstream, avoiding predators, then come to a happy end spawning in large numbers in upper Bear Creek as they did before the coming of settlers. "It’s really fun getting to design a habitat then learning right away how it works by running water through it," said student Luc Ebnother. "It’s pretty cool designing it and seeing how salmon can use it, obeying their really strong instincts, so they come right back to spawn at the spot they were born," said student Jordan Feist. Student Colin Haug observed, "It’s neat to learn how water flows and how you have to make it so the fish have plenty of shade and places to hide, but you have to build it strong enough so that nothing collapses." On the wall of the Nature Center, a huge mural depicts this very spot before settlement 150 years ago, when Bear Creek had adequate meanders to slow the stream and allow buildup of roots, snags, boulders and pools � all of which engender the right conditions for fish life. "The creek was channelized by settlers, and the once-plentiful beaver — and their dams — are gone," said Gies. "You still see some chinook salmon and steelhead spawning here. A few beaver, too, but they can’t build dams. They live in the creek banks. Now, we have become the beavers and we must put in the obstacles that create side channels, gravel beds and wetlands." John Darling is a free-lance writer living in Ashland. E-mail him at [email protected]. Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright © 1997-2003 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions Website Feedback 3 WEEKS FREE! ADVERTISERS SPECIAL SECTIONS Auto Finder Job Finder Home Finder Joy Magazine Homelife Magazine Tempo Real Estate Showcase Food for Thought Hike of the Week Wellness Connection Outdoor Journal Moving to Southern Oregon? Volunteer Openings Prime Times