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NEWS & EVENTS
Texas Mid-Coast NWR's Discovery Environmental Education Program
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Photo Credit: Marty Cornell, USFWS |
Volunteers, partners and the Texas Mid-Coast National Wildlife Refuges bring the Discovery Environmental Education Program (DEEP) alive. Thousands of students and adults participate each year in an intensive and unique hands-on experience in outdoor education where they are able to experience nature.
Texas Mid-Coast Training Technician, Bryan Adams, coordinates the program. With the assistance of devoted volunteers, DEEP enables a child to experience the Texas Gulf coast much as it was before the arrival of humans. Volunteers bring their enthusiasm for the natural world to students who are amazed at what is outside their front door.
Students are naturally curious and enjoy being outdoors and this program taps into their enthusiasm and directs it into a science learning experience. DEEP influences the lives of the participating children and helps them to appreciate the gift of living on the Texas coast.
Headquartered at the Discovery Center at the Brazoria NWR, students discover a multitude of invertebrates in a freshwater pond by dipping a net, they touch and learn about reptiles, and pull a seine through a salt marsh. They learn the ways in which water chemistry affects life, and the importance of wetlands to the fisheries of the Gulf of Mexico. The Discovery Center allows students to bring samples from the wild into a laboratory setting and conduct experiments and observations they could not make in the field. The Discover Outpost, at the Hudson Woods Unit of San Bernard NWR, provides opportunities for students to discover the ecology of a bottomland forest and the impact invasive species have on the natural environment.
Partnerships have helped to build DEEP and encourage involvement by new schools and organizations over the program's 12 year history. A Nature of Learning grant to the Friends of Brazoria Wildlife Refuges enabled Northside Elementary School in Angleton, Texas to incorporate multiple field trips to the refuges into their fourth grade curriculum. This program provides an intensive year of experience bringing nature into all subject materials. A Coastal Management Plan grant from Texas General Land Office was instrumental in providing environmental education equipment and displays for the Discovery Center. The Cradle of Texas Chapter of the Texas Master Naturalists supports the program and is the source for most of the trained volunteer docents. Nearly 2000 volunteer hours were donated by these volunteers during field trips in 2006.
DEEP fosters a lifelong love for wild places in the children who will be the future leaders of the community.
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Last updated:
March 5, 2009
