Tidal Exchange
SEEDS WILL BLOSSOM
Juan Ramirez, Community Programs Manager
Picture a field of coast live oaks, shrubs, and grasses—toyon, coyote brush, blue wildrye. A creek meanders through a forest of arroyo willow. It’s late summer and most of the yarrow and California aster have dried up. A hummingbird floats over wildflowers. A single seed drops from the purple needlegrass, and hope for this seed begins.
In a community with no open space, no parks within a ten-minute drive, the youth growing up in Las Lomas have few opportunities to connect with nature. Fourth graders in this close-knit rural community are surrounded by incredible ecosystems and thriving biodiversity, yet very few touch points with the natural world. At least most of them have gardens at home; they can jump the fence at Hall District Elementary School to play on weekends. But this story is changing. Last year, every fourth
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student participates in one of
A
many outdoor education programs at the Elkhorn Slough Reserve.
Elkhorn Slough Foundation
board of directors
Bruce Welden
President
Robert Hartmann
Vice President
Tara Trautsch
Secretary
Anne Secker
Treasurer
Anne Olsen
Past President
Gary Bloom
Judith Connor
Terry Eckhardt
Sandy Hale
Emmett Linder
Kent Marshall
Hon. Susan Matcham
Mi Ra Park
Laura Solorio, MD
Becky Suarez
David Warner
Mark Silberstein
Executive Director
The mission of the Elkhorn Slough Foundation is to conserve and restore Elkhorn Slough and its watershed.
We see Elkhorn Slough and its watershed protected forever— a working landscape where people, farming, industry, and nature thrive together. As one of California’s last great coastal wetlands, Elkhorn Slough will remain a wellspring of life and a source of inspiration for generations to come.
PO Box 267, Moss Landing California 95039
tel: (831) 728-5939
fax: (831) 728-7031
elkhornslough.org
Tidal Exchange
Ross Robertson, Editor
Remarkable Ride
Dave Feliz, Elkhorn Slough Reserve Manager
Well, after 40+ years working for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, it’s time to stop wearing the patch, retire, and get on with life. It’s been a remarkable ride.
I’ve been managing CDFW lands since 1988, when I landed at the San Jacinto Wildlife Area in Riverside County. After that, it was a five-year stint at Grizzly Island, where we got up close and personal with a herd of Tule Elk in California’s largest estuary. On to Davis, where I managed wetlands in the Sacramento River flood control system in the Yolo Bypass, working with rice farmers and cattlemen.
When I got to Elkhorn Slough, it was clear this was a place that was not only beautiful and full of life but also a precious place in our community. Whether they visited the Reserve in elementary school, hiked the trails, or kayaked the slough among the sea otters, this place had many admirers and supporters.
This was no accident. It was a testament to years of great work by a talented staff, a dedicated corps of volunteers, and broad support from community, state, and national leadership.
© 2024 Elkhorn Slough Foundation
It has been my pleasure to be a part of this effort for the last 13 years. I’ll miss the sound of white-crowned sparrows in the winter, dipping rare salamanders out of ponds we created, hearing the laughter of children, and spending time with all of the people who share the same goal of enjoying and protecting this wonderful place. n
Dave Feliz (by Kiliii Yuyan).
SEEDS WILL BLOSSOM
continued from cover
grader at Hall Elementary had up to fifteen opportunities to visit the Carneros Creek Outdoor Classroom. Fifteen chances to explore their curiosity about nature,, grow new relationships with their peers, and interact with college mentors from California State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB).
A lot of this is new to many of them. It could be the first time they see a millipede or a snake. The first time they collect seeds. The first time they plant a native plant.
ESF’s
Outdoor Classroom is right among ecosystems in upper Elkhorn Slough that are hotbeds of activity for our stewardship team—rare coastal prairies, native oaks in tension with invasive eucalyptus, key freshwater systems that feed the slough itself and the strained aquifer beneath it. Yet the ecosystem of human relationships we’re tending along the banks of Carneros Creek is just as important.
At the beginning of every gathering, we talk about expectations, safety, and the theme for the day. In that talk, I speak about seeds. Seeds are the foundation for so much life on this planet, including our own.
Together, we think of our values as seeds. As we get older, we water them, tend to them, and trim their growth in order for us to become the people that we want to be. My goal is for everyone at the Outdoor Classroom to feel connected to this place, and to each other, in ways that foster care and appreciation.
One of my favorite community-building activities is called “Our Seeds Will Blossom.” It’s an invitation for students and families to bring who they are to our circle, and to witness each other. With paper, crayons, and markers, people reflect on the seeds they’ve chosen, celebrating the soil that grounds them and the growth they recognize in themselves. In the end, everyone has a beautiful image of a seed growing into a flowering plant.
Art by Elia, Jonathan, Lexi, Melanie, Ruby, and Sebastian.
Makingpeople feel valued is the first step toward real inclusion. In some ways, our program itself is a seed on the ground waiting for the first drop of rain.
The seeds of this program were planted in 2016, when the Outdoor Classroom began as a collaboration between ESF’s Kenton Parker and Katie Pofahl and the Environmental Studies program at CSUMB. We started with one outing per year for each classroom at Hall Elementary. Now, we take three full classrooms of fourth graders out every month, and nearly fifty CSUMB students participate each year. There’s a fifth grade cohort, now, too, with 22 students who were part of the program last year coming back for a second year, expanding our mentoring cycle.
This partnership nurtures all of us. It’s easy to grow together because nothing is forced. Leadership is shared among staff, teachers, faculty, undergraduates, and the fourth graders themselves. We’re committed to growing our curriculum organically, in ways that center youth voices. Through classroom reflections after each outing, students not only share what their favorite activities were and why, but also meet with us in small group discussions to explore stories of curiosity, independent learning, and growth in their relationships. These reflections then feed immediately back into the process of curriculum development for the next month.
Last year, many of us co-wrote a chapter for the book Multispecies Thinking in the Classroom and Beyond: Teaching for a Sustainable Future. In it, we describe one of the most beautiful gifts of our partnership: the “moments of magic” we experience with our youth when everyone is alive, existing together—the trees, the water, the birds, that fourth grader holding a millipede. Those moments when relationships are amplified are moments we can take with us, that hold us, that move us toward a just and flourishing world. n
“Last December, one of our students made a ‘Welcome!’ sign and hung it at the oak tree. He checks every time we go back to make sure it is still there.”
Cynthia, teacher
“A Home to Me” Windows on the Outdoor Classroom
Ilyne Castellanos, Juan Ramirez, and Ross Robertson
What keeps you coming back?
“The wonder, amazement, curiosity. A lot of these kids have never really been in the outdoors like this. This partnership enables us to provide enriching experiences for countless children.”
Alice, teacher
“I want to go back.”
Nataly, 4th grade
What went into planning today’s activity?
“We really want to let their curiosity run—just give them the freedom to get dirty and get into it. I think that’s what they like the most about being out here.”
Ariana, CSUMB
“Thiswasthefunnest
thefunnestdayofmylife.”
Jocelyn,4thgrade
What stands out to you as a parent?
“The connection with nature. One boy was so happy he brought shoes for the mud, because at home, he doesn’t have a place to get them dirty.”
Sofia, parent
What are your hopes for the students?
“The biggest thing is that they learn how important nature is. That everything is connected, including them.”
Antonio, CSUMB
“My favorite activity was going to the top of the mountain, looking at our school, and feeling the air.”
Melani, 4th grade
Space for Dreaming
Interview with Dr. Victoria Derr
Ross Robertson
Victoria Derr is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at CSU Monterey Bay, where she leads the Environmental Education and Community Outreach Concentration. For more than 30 years, Dr. Derr has engaged children, youth, and community members in participatory action research and place-conscious education in both rural and urban settings of Mexico and the U.S., including with indigenous communities, Spanish land grant communities, and farm-working families.
Let’s start with the place itself. What makes the Outdoor Classroom so special?
The oak tree just draws you in. Kenton talks about this a lot—when you duck in under the canopy, you immediately feel the temperature change, and you’re totally surrounded. Juan says it’s like a grandmother hugging you. You feel something. I actually think the place itself makes us want to act differently. It makes us want to listen.
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Oak photo by Evan Peers.
“We all grew up in the mountains, and our favorite thing to do was climb trees. There was so much tranquility deep in the mountains. Walking for hours, I never felt fear. I remember smelling how wet the soil was, the aroma of trees. You felt comfortable—that’s what I loved the most.”
Gabriel
“I feel excitement and peacefulness here. My favorite memory was when we built a very, very big nest—enough for Allison to fit in!”
Ari, 5th grade
SPACE FOR DREAMING
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When you look at the fourth graders’ drawings and reflections in the beginning, there’s the unfamiliarity of the place. Everything’s new. Some of it is exciting, and some they aren’t really sure about. Then, by the time you get to the hike at the end of the year, it’s like they own that place. They belong. It’s a profound transformation, especially considering that we only go out there a few times each season.
For my college students, the majority start out with the mindset that they’re the adults, the teachers, the knowledge holders, the ones who are going to tell kids things. They don’t necessarily feel like experts about the place or the species that live there, but they start with that traditional model of what a teacher is “supposed” to be. But by the end many are saying, “We learn just as much from the kids as they do from us. Maybe more.”
What’s it like working with a land trust?
Land trusts are well-situated for this, because land trusts are place-based. But what I’ve always loved about our partnership is that everyone is so open and interested in exploring the possibilities. From the start, Juan’s predecessor Katie and I were on the same page. She felt that land trusts were really beginning to think about how to be better neighbors, and it was challenging. It’s
“It feels good to come back because it brings back so many memories. I hope no one breaks down the trees because they make air for us to breathe.”
Allison, 5th grade
“I like nature, and it’s really cool to know this place. Every time I come, I feel like going on a hike! I wish there were more places like this for kids.”
Dylan, 6th grade
hard to change models when you’ve been doing things a certain way for a long time.
I remember a journal article from that time, based on a nationwide survey, about how land trusts were approaching conservation. The authors found that only a small percentage of land trusts were thinking about how to bring more equity and inclusion into their work. And of those, a lot of them were exploring new modes of using the land, through partnership.
Now, a lot of people are talking about how to do community work in ways that are reciprocal, and I think the model we’ve developed is really bringing that forward. Juan says, “we don’t want to say that we’re a model of anything,” but we are.
Why does he say that?
Because he’s humble. I am too, but I guess less than Juan! Also, my job is to know what’s going on in the broader context of environmental education. I know what people are saying about conservation education and land trusts, and this is a model. It’s different.
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“If You Want to Go, I’ll Take You”
Juan Ramirez
Meet the Mendozas, an extended family of parents, children, and cousins from Las Lomas whose kids have gone through the Outdoor Classroom program at Hall District Elementary School and who regularly participate in Nosotros Nos Curamos, or “Together We Heal,” our expanding program for families in the community.
“It has helped me personally to get out with the family and explore new places, natural spaces. The program also helps the kids, because they get outside the house, away from the tablets—de-stress, have fun, & breathe fresh air for a while.”
Marisol
“Nosotros Nos Curamos has helped us connect with nature again because life here has a lot of routine. From work to the house and that’s it, no time and no one to connect with. You don’t go out for a walk because you don’t know which places are private property. I live ten minutes away from Moss Landing, and I’d never been kayaking before I met you.
So many in our community grew up surrounded by nature, but now live in cities, and they’re scared of going out. They don’t know the language, they don’t know where they can go to parks. I’d love to volunteer to get people outside. It would be beautiful to connect with them and say, ‘There is a place you can go on walks. If you want to go, I’ll take you.’”
Leonor
Clockwise from left: Leonor, Gabriel, Marisol, Jackie, Marcelino, Ari, Sammy, Kimberley, Yvette, Dylan, Allison. Photos by Juan Ramirez.
Twenty Million Seeds
Andrea Woolfolk Stewardship Coordinator, Elkhorn Slough Reserve
From left: volunteer Pat Mahoney collects gumplant seeds at Hester Marsh; Seed Increase Specialist Bill Fortner with seed from our native grass farm; volunteer Don Chesterman seeding at Hester Marsh.
Photos by Andrea Woolfolk.
A lot of hardworking and enthusiastic people have come together to rebuild a lost coastal prairie along the banks of Elkhorn Slough. This is part of a larger Elkhorn Slough Reserve project at a place called Hester, designed to restore both salt marsh and native grassland.
For more than 100 years this parcel was used as a farm, and its original tidal wetlands and prairie were dramatically altered for row crops and other agricultural uses. In 2007, the farm’s well started showing signs of seawater intrusion—a regional problem caused by largescale over-pumping of groundwater—and the owners decided the time had come to sell. The Reserve acquired the property with ESF’s help, and we saw an opportunity to restore the natural habitats that had been converted during the farm days.
During the time that it was drained, the former salt marsh sank, and restoring it meant filling it back in with dirt high enough that seawater would not simply cover and drown the marsh plants. For this, our Tidal Wetland Program would need something on the order of half a
million cubic yards of soil. Some of that fill came from a nearby Pajaro River flood control project; we got the rest by scraping topsoil from the old, now-fallowed farm field.
These scraped areas provided us with an unusual opportunity—to bring back the native grasses and wildflowers that had been lost in the 1800s and 1900s. But the scraped soils had the look of a strip mine, and the path forward seemed daunting.
It has taken a lot of people many steps and many years to restore these scraped areas back to prairie. We started by scouting other native grasslands next to Elkhorn Slough and recording which species grew there, paying special attention to native grasses and flowers found in areas that were scraped decades ago, where topsoil had been removed to create levees in the adjacent marsh. These became our reference sites.
We then conducted pilot studies, planting new grass and flower seedlings at some of our reference sites to see if they would survive. We brought scraped soils from
Below, top: Stewardship Specialist Mary Paul planting blue-eyed grass with members of the California Conservation Corps in 2021. Below, bottom: the same field of blue-eyed grass in 2023.
Hester back to our greenhouse to grow our target species in those soils and compare them to specimens grown in standard potting soil.
Once we had a good list of native grasses and flowers, we worked with Reserve volunteers to wild collect grass and wildflower seeds from local patches. Then we partnered with ESF, interns, and volunteers to plant some of those wild-collected seeds at our native grass farm and produce enough seed to use at Hester. With volunteers and students, we harvested, cleaned, and stored hundreds of pounds of those farmed seeds for direct seeding. We also grew out tens of thousands of transplants, a task split between our own greenhouse and the Central Coast Wilds nursery in Santa Cruz.
At our first Hester planting, in 2018, we worked with students, volunteers, and the California Conservation Corps to broadcast those seeds and transplant those plants, sometimes in deep mud and in the midst of cold winter rains. We planted there again in 2021. This fall, we will hit a new milestone: twenty million native seeds
Below, top: scraped field at Hester Marsh in 2018. Below, bottom: the same field in 2024, now a flourishing expanse of creeping wildrye.
will be broadcast by hand across an eight-acre plot, our largest coastal prairie restoration to date.
Our fall planting will take just a few days, but it could never happen without the extended community whose collective hands have touched every single one of these seeds. They’re out there year after year, planting and tending, setting up irrigation, battling erosion, and weeding out the worst of the non-native plants.
Twenty million seeds. I can’t think of a more beautiful testament to the people whose love and commitment make stories like this possible at Elkhorn Slough. So far, our restored grasslands are doing as well or better than the reference sites that have guided our work since the beginning. And we’re all looking forward to watching them grow. n
Thanks to our funders: California Coastal Conservancy, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, California Ocean Protection Council, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
We’re honored to participate in Monterey County Gives, an annual year-end fundraiser hosted by the Community Foundation for Monterey County, MC Weekly, the Monterey Peninsula Foundation, and others. Between November 14 and December 31, a portion of every donation made through MC Gives! will be matched, increasing your impact.
None of ESF’s work—from preserving threatened ecosystems and restoring natural areas for wildlife to connecting people and nature in the heart of Monterey Bay—would happen without the support of our community. Whether you’re a new member or wish to leverage your year-end gift with matching funds from our partners, please support our MC Gives! campaign today. montereycountygives.com/elkhorn
SPACE FOR DREAMING
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How does this program stand out from the norm?
The big difference is that we are approaching environmental education from the standpoint of centering empathy and relationships. Even though everyone else sees what I’ve been doing for most of my life as environmental education, I always said, “I’m not an environmental educator,” because the thing that has always been most important to me is elevating the voices of people that are not often being listened to or seen.
Is there a component of environmental justice here?
Yes! Initially, environmental justice was largely about avoiding disproportionate harms. But there are a lot of different ways of thinking about it. Another one is representational justice. This partnership really touches on that, because community is central to the whole process, where the children can find others who speak their language and share their experiences.
At the December field trip last year, Jocelyn—a CSUMB student who grew up speaking Spanish in the home—was speaking Spanish with the fourth graders. And the kids were like, “how do you know Spanish?” They were almost afraid to ask her. There’s a lot in that; they may assume that college students don’t know Spanish because they come from a different background. And Jocelyn said, “well, I grew up just like you.” She started telling them about her family. That’s representational justice: finding themselves in each other.
There’s also interspecies justice, which is a lifeaffirming view for all species to co-exist and thrive. The term interspecies justice really comes from indigenous communities, who have said: “Those are our kin. And when you harm them, you’re harming us, too. We have a relationship with them. When all the salmon die, you’ve just murdered our relatives.”
The way this is felt is profoundly different than when you don’t have this kind of connection. Our students start to see the Outdoor Classroom as full of species that belong. When they go around collecting juncus seeds, they know it’s connected to salamanders and the ponds that are part of their life cycle. It’s not just about collecting seeds—it’s about being connected to other species and taking care of the land so that everyone flourishes.
Kestrel photo by Bob Levy.
I’ve been to a couple of these outings myself, and that sense of ease and belonging you’re describing is beautiful to witness.
Definitely! There’s an entire history here, and we are part of it. I’ve always thought of this place as an extension of Porter Ranch, and that goes back a really long time. Nature is amazing around here, but it’s a mosaic. This was an old ranch. It’s a piece of land the Elkhorn Slough Foundation is restoring, and there’s all these beautiful pockets of biodiversity, but there are other areas that need work. If this was a pristine environment, it would feel a little less like home, you know?
SLOUGH VIEW
Choreographing Discovery
Kenton Parker
The Outdoor Classroom is comfortable. It’s not so nice that you can’t let kids do the things they naturally want to do. People feel like we can take risks here, and being able to take risks is important—especially for the kids.
I’ve been doing place-based learning with schools, communities, and universities for more than 30 years, and I’ve only felt this way about a couple of places. I call it “space for dreaming.” We don’t just get together at the beginning of the year and envision what we want to accomplish, and then do the work to make it happen. The space for dreaming is the project. That’s what’s special about this. n
As a child I lost myself in the miniature landscapes scattered around the yard of our tiny suburban tract home built on ancient sand dunes in southern Santa Monica Bay. I was captivated by tiny bees with wings buzzing in a blur; butterflies on sloppy, chaotic flights; and katydids whose hidden wings would magically unfold and carry them across the street. With my Gilbert microscope kit, I could watch brine shrimp eggs hatch into tiny cyclopes swimming with feathery appendages.
The mysteries of these tiny creatures comforted me as I struggled to understand the challenging emotional landscapes of my family and neighborhood. My sense of wonder carried me through many years of schooling. Eventually, I did research in a biochemistry lab dedicated to unraveling the mysteries of how we see at the molecular level—a scale I had never imagined as a child.
Then, watching my own children discover the world for the first time, I was reminded of this insatiable curiosity. I searched for new ways to teach science that would nurture inquisitiveness and help build the emotional intelligence needed to thrive in a complex technological society.
I changed my career, became a science education
consultant in the local schools, and used the Elkhorn Slough Reserve as an outdoor classroom. This led to my tenure there as Education Coordinator, where I worked with a community of dedicated conservationists, land stewards, researchers, and educators at the Elkhorn Slough Foundation and many other partners contributing to the legacy of environmental education in Monterey Bay.
Now in “retirement,” the Carneros Creek Outdoor Classroom has become another collaborative adventure at a venue filled with wonders. I see each field trip as participatory performance art: the artistic directors (teachers), the performers (CSUMB students), and the audience of fourth graders all dance on a stage that includes many habitats, with supporting actors of many genera. The moments of magic we experience together are too numerous to count.
My hope is that with each production, the magic continues. It is already growing beyond my vision, incorporating contributions from the creative energy of each participant as we develop a dynamic program that serves the evolving needs of young people in this community. n
an echo on top of the mountains.” “The woods were so large, there is
Art by Ashley, text by Maria.