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Keeping nature beautiful By Mark Freeman CAVE JUNCTION � Whenever Greg Crowl walked the woodsy trails and riverside access points around town, he would stuff his pockets with the old fishing line, food wrappers and other garbage strewn about by less careful visitors. "Nature�s beautiful," says Crowl, 16, "but you get these jerks who don�t seem to care and throw trash around." Knowing he can�t combat litter alone, Crowl has enlisted some of his friends at Illinois Valley High School into a new program they hope will make trails and parks a little bit nicer for everyone. Crowl is one of the leaders of his school�s new program, called Access Watch, which will focus its youthful energy on cleaning some of the trailheads and parks around their hometown of Cave Junction. "People are abusing these places," says Carol Chan, an 18-year-old senior who is also involved in the program. "We need to set an example for other people to clean up after themselves so we can keep these nice trails and parks clean." The Access Watch kids also want to set an example for other teenagers across Oregon. "We�re a little club," Chan says. "But we�d like to see little clubs in all the schools in Oregon." The program will be unveiled Friday during a day-long symposium put on by high school students interested and active in watershed health issues. The Second Annual Regional Watershed Science Symposium will run from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday at Glendale High School in Glendale, off Interstate 5 about 50 miles northwest of Medford. The symposium is run through Oregon Stewardship, a non-profit program that promotes land and water conservation projects in Southern Oregon high schools. About 100 students from schools as far away as Brookings and Coquille will be on hand to display, discuss and present their experiments and projects done through schoolwork on watershed health issues. Most of the students are in applied science or environmental classes in their respective high schools and take part in the Oregon Stewardship program devised and run by Jim Hutchins, a Medford naturalist. Glendale High School students will show some of the coho salmon fingerlings raised at their on-campus hatchery. The symposium is also serving as the springboard for starting Access Watch. Hutchins believes the program will help foster better treatment of woods and water-access points that could become off-limits to people if their abuse escalates. "Using these access trails is a privilege and, as good land stewards, we�re supposed to be taking care of these," says Hutchins, 65. "But led by the high schoolers and their energy, I think this is something that is really going to work and really take off." The Illinois Valley students will initially focus their attention on Forks State Park, its trails and the Grayback Creek Trailhead � all of which are close to Cave Junction. Hutchins hopes the Illinois Valley program will dovetail into similar Access Watch programs run by other high school groups throughout the region. Hutchins formed Oregon Stewardship in 1995 at Illinois Valley High School, and it has since expanded throughout the region. The program takes elementary, middle and high school students from throughout southwest Oregon and teaches them ethics, stewardship and awareness through classwork and outdoor projects. The program in 1997 won the Caring for the Land Award from U.S. Forest Service and in 1999 took home the 1999 Outstanding Achievement Award in Conservation Education from the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. The symposium has several local, state, federal and private sponsors. Staff writer Mark Freeman covers the outdoors for the Mail Tribune. Call him at 776-4470, or e-mail him at [email protected] ) Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.