I served as a corpsmember on year 32 of the Watershed Stewards Program, a collaboration between the California Conservation Corps and Americorps, aimed at performing salmonid restoration across California. Corpsmembers are placed around the state at various federal, state, and local agencies and contribute to the projects of their placement site while also fulfilling some requirements such as teaching environmental science lessons at a title I elementary school and hosting a 50-person volunteer restoration event, both in your placement site’s community.
I was placed with the Central Coast Wetlands Group (CCWG), a nonprofit based out of SJSU’s Moss Landing Marine Laboratories with the goal of coordinating the advancement of wetland science and management on California’s central coast. Since working with them, I have assisted with a variety of monitoring and restoration efforts on the central coast and across the state.
In the Fall and Spring field seasons, I assisted with the Estuarine Marine Protected Area Monitoring Program. This effort invoIved sampling sediment and geomorphology, water quality, fish populations, vegetation, and trash abundance. I sampled estuaries with CCWG ranging from San Luis Obispo to Santa Cruz, while other organizations sample sites in Southern California and Northern California. This collaborative project has been ongoing since 2020, and it has been incredibly insightful and exciting to take part in this for two seasons of field work!
In the months between EMPA sampling, I worked on dune restoration across Monterey County state beaches (Moss Landing State Beach, Zmudowski State Beach, and Salinas River State Beach) as part of the Monterey Bay Living Shoreline Program. This required pre- and post-restoration surveys of vegetation, hay bale and sand fencing installation for sediment accretion, and native plant transplanting and outplanting. We also held 6 different events on weekends where I would lead volunteers from local communities to outplant species we raised in our greenhouse and other organizations’. This was my personal favorite project of this program, helping revitalize coastal habitat for snowy plovers and other native species on the Monterey Bay coastline!
From May-August, I assisted with the EPA’s National Wetland Condition Assessment effort at CCWG, spanning 70+ sites across California. At each site, we would conduct vegetation surveys, collect soil samples, and collect water quality samples. This project required 16 hour days in the field and many long stretches of driving, but was incredibly rewarding being in beautiful backcountry areas. I have never experienced a project quite like this, and hope to get involved with other EPA monitoring efforts in the future.
I’m incredibly grateful for the time I’ve had at CCWG. I joined the Watershed Stewards Program with the hope of getting exposure to a variety of scientific projects and methods, and came away with so many connections and friends. My time with them has shown me the value of community, and how important the feeling of community is for unifying and motivating people to do good for the environment.
