NEWSROOM
Northshore High School Students Help Restore the Fritchie Marsh
April 19, 2010
Northshore High School students have been busy the past several months helping restore Fritchie Marsh.
Through an Earth Day Network Grant awarded to NHS environmental science teacher Evelyn Bosworth, Northshore students in four classes learned about wetlands, land loss issues and restoration efforts in the fall of 2009. In December, students began growing plants that were later transplanted in Fritchie Marsh during the first week of April.
“Mrs. Bosworth’s and William Mount’s classes grew Vallisneria americana plants in coco matting submerged in large tanks housed on NHS campus,” said Carol Franze, with Louisiana Sea Grant and the LSU AgCenter. Franze, along with Joann Burke of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation, taught students last fall about the functions and value of wetlands.
“During the deployment of the plants they cultivated, the high school students sampled for benthic invertebrates and took soil and water quality measurements, with additional help from Christine Fox from the LPBF,” said Mindy McCallum, LSU AgCenter 4-H Youth Wetlands agent who coordinated the transplant effort. “Most of these students had never been to a marsh before this trip, although the high school is only a few miles away,” she added.
To better understand how fragile the marsh system is since recent hurricane damage, Daniel Breaux, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Refuge Manager, took the students on an air boat ride to witness it firsthand. Harold Cullen, local landowner adjacent to Fritchie Marsh, allowed students to access the marsh from his property. Mr. Cullen said he has seen the damage from hurricanes first hand and was happy to help out with restoration efforts by the NSH.
The restoration site will be monitored to measure plant growth and expansion.
For more information contact Carol Franze, LA Sea Grant and the LSU AgCenter, cfranze@agcenter.lsu.edu.
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