Green Team wraps up productive month in Rogue River watershed

Green Team members (left to right) DeAnna Clum, Claire Gault, Sam Burgess and Beckett Vigh plant a native buffer on Rum Creek.

By Jamie Vaughn

Last month, the Rogue River Home Rivers Initiative in Michigan hired eight high school students to form a “Green Team” to install and maintain green infrastructure practices throughout the Rogue River watershed. Four students worked during the month of June and are celebrating their last work day on June 30.

Local gardener and native plant specialist Georgia Donovan led the team – Beckett Vigh, Claire Gault, DeAnna Clum, and Sam Burgess. During their four weeks the students were exposed to many aspects of the environmental field and received valuable job training to shape them into future stewards of their local- and global-watershed.

“Being on the Green Team has been a great opportunity to not only help the environment, but also to learn about environmental issues and how to resolve them in the future,” Beckett said.  

Although many of the students hope to pursue a career in aquatic ecology, the knowledge they are gaining through this experience will help them make good decisions as a citizen of the planet in every aspect of their life.

At Calvin College, they took classes with biology professor Dave Warners and learned about watershed ecology, native and nonnative plants, and even helped college students with their own research projects. They collected native seeds from the wild and learned how to grow them in a greenhouse – and those seeds will be planted in the Rogue River watershed next summer.

Beckett, Claire, DeAnna, and Sam then used that classroom knowledge to do their own on the ground restoration.

Their largest project took place at homeowner Jack McClellan’s property in downtown Rockford. Jack lives on Rum Creek and reached out to Trout Unlimited to help him protect the creek on his property.

Because stormwater runoff is the largest threat to the Rogue River and its tributaries, the Green Team installed a vegetated buffer of native flowers, grasses and shrubs to reduce and filter the runoff entering Rum Creek near the confluence with the Rogue. During this project, the students learned proper techniques for working on a stream buffer, such as use of an erosion control blanket to prevent excess sediment entering the creek.

In total, the Green Team worked on seven different rain gardens, stream buffers, and bioswales in four different cities, villages and townships. By doing so, they’ve helped educate the local community and got people interested in green infrastructure.

 Sam Burgess expressed: “Being on the Green Team is such a unique experience. You interact with the community in so many different ways, that if someone in town asks what you do, you can just point to a nearby rain garden and say, ‘This is what I do.’”

Four new students will work throughout July on more green infrastructure projects in the Rogue River watershed and the EPA is funding a team for next summer as well. TU is very proud of the work the students have done and is excited to reach and educate even more students this summer.

The Rogue River Home Rivers Initiative Project is funded by the Frey Foundation, the Grand Rapids Community Foundation, the Wege Foundation, the Wolverine World Wide Foundation, and the Schrems West Michigan Trout Unlimited.

Jamie Vaughan is Trout Unlimited's Rogue River Home Rivers Initiative Coordinator.