Highway Cleanup on Short Notice

It is a hectic part of the semester. First we plan a fish removal from Lake LU (on the UWA campus). It is canceled for some reason. So we change plans for a prairie burn, guess what, canceled due to weather. For some strange reason we can't burn the prairie while it is raining. So we plan our next Adopt-a-Stream river monitoring event. It rains, snows and the river is out of its banks. CANCELED! So we plan a Highway clean up and success strikes us at last.

The Highway clean up was planed on short notice, so we did not have many ECEC members present, actually (not counting me) Caiti was the only ECEC member there. That's OK because I had seven service learning students trying to finish their hours. So what do I tell them, no you can't work now but meet me at 10:00 Tuesday and you can finish those hours. I don't know what our record time for a highway clean up is, but I'll bet we came pretty close today. From leaving Cross Hall, setting up signs, handing out the wonderful orange vests and trash bags, to finishing, it took us approximately 45 minutes to clean our mile stretch of highway.

If that wasn't enough, the Phi Theta Kappa mile stretch was also due. So what do we do, load up all those students and head down Highway 15 South. Our one PTK member (again not counting me) Caiti, helped lead the charge down our stretch of highway. This stretch for some reason is a little longer than ECEC's. It is mostly because ECEC's goes in front of the school and more houses. Which means cleaner ditches and road sides. The PTK stretch also had more trash. It took about one hour.

So we left Cross Hall around 10:00 and returned about 12:00. To me that's not bad. Cleaning up two miles of highway in two hours. Thank you service learning!

We do have several projects in mind for the Spring Semester. They include; a trip (hopefully a camp out) to Okatibbee to put up and replace bluebird boxes and martin houses, more Highway cleanups, a river cleanup, Adopt-a-stream water monitoring, prairie burn, and some Spring trip(probably back to the Coast). Let's keep our fingers crossed.

Curt Skipper

National Public Lands Day

Back on September 13 ECEC went to participate in National Public Lands Day at Okatibbee Resivour. We met up with Mr. Gary Hardin at Okatibbee. Mr. Hardin works for the U.S. Army Core of Engineers there at Okatibbee. He is our liaison with Okatibbee. He always has wonderful projects for us and works so well with our students, making sure to teach them the ecological importance of whatever project it is that he has for us that day. Let me go ahead and say that we really appreciate him.

This year at NPLD the group worked on setting up Bluebird boxes. Mr. Gary had the boxes built and ready for us, so all we had to do was put them up. We used T posts, drove them in the ground, and attached the bird boxes to the post. We put up between 20-30 bluebird boxes.

After the hard work was finished we met up at Cove's Nest Marina for lunch. We ate some hot dogs, chips, and cokes. Afterward we won door prizes, they ranged from t-shirts to fishin' poles.

All in all we had a great time at National Public Lands Day. We always do.

If anyone has anything to add to this then e-mail me.

Curt Skipper

International Coast Clean up

This weekend the Environmental Club teamed up with Phi Theta Kappa to go participate in the International Coast Clean up. To start things off, the van we used for the trip was EC's Brand Spankin' New 12 passenger van. When I picked it up, it had 94 miles on it. I could not believe the van was entrusted to us on its maiden voyage.

We had three fantastic students join along in the journey. We also had two special guests, two of ECEC's alum's and better than that, they are both past presidents; Annie Strohm and Steven Cullen. Annie met us at EC and rode with us. Steven came over from Mobile, AL where he is working on his co-op portion for his degree. Both have always been extremely active ECEC members and even now as alums they join in on everything they can. Mrs. Robin Johnson and Mrs. Felicia Skipper also joined us on this outing.

Friday night we camped at the Audubon Center in Pascagoula. They have always given us a place to stay when we need it. That night we followed ECEC tradition and had a feast. This time we grilled tilapia, shrimp kabobs, boyscout style potatoes, and the Johnson's famous peach cobbler. Afterward we sat around a campfire, listened to some guitar playing, stories, and then we moved in for some games.

Saturday morning came early, 5:00 am to be exact. It took a few minutes, but we all began scampering around getting read for our day. Mr. J and Steven started on breakfast, I'm sure others helped so I'm not trying to leave anyone out, where we ate pancakes and sausage. After everyone cleaned up and we packed up, everyone jumped in a vehicle and headed toward Gulfport to start the beach clean up. Along the way we had a real close view of a sand-hill crane, beautiful bird that did cross the road, and made it all the way across thankfully.

We made it to the clean up site where we joined the Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College Phi Theta Kappa students. Everyone jumped in and did a great job cleaning the beach. We actually cleaned nearly a mile past what we were supposed to do. We did pick up a bag of cans that made it back to EC and we had about three bags of plastic to be recycled that we left for MGCCC.

Eventful as that was the day was about to get more interesting. Under the careful observation of Cody, a motorcyclist was stalled out and needed assistance pushing her bike out of traffic. So we helped her get her bike on the sidewalk. Well what actually happened was, she was about to turn and the front wheel hit a pile of sand, the bike turned over and she scraped her knee. Well under Cody's suggestion she checked the scrape and it was a huge gaping gash. With the help of a first aid kit and Annie practicing her vet skills, we cleaned and bandaged the wound. Hopefully she did go to the hospital for sticthes. After all of that we went and ate, then made the trek back to Decatur.

Thanks to everyone that helped on this trip. I had a great time and hope you did to. If any of you have anything you would like to add to this or editing then let me know.

Curt Skipper

ECEC is now on the web

I would like to take this opportunity for any ECEC members to send info for our new blog spot.