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JERSEY SHORE – Wildlife in and around the borough have received a helping hand – in fact, about 100 pairs of helping hands – from the Jersey Shore Middle School’s Outdoors Club.
Close to 100 students in grades six, seven and eight have joined the club this year, said teacher Jeffrey Klugh, and each level completes different projects. He has been an adviser for all three years that the club has been in existence and is thrilled at how it has attracted more and more students each year.
“A lot of kids enjoy the outdoors but don’t understand all the work and effort that goes into it,” he said. “This club gets kids outside and thinking about how what they do impacts the world.”
Recent projects have included maintaining hiking trails at R.B. Winter State Park near Mifflinburg and rain gardens right in Jersey Shore Borough.
“We’re looking for other spring projects right now,” Klugh said.
Many of the activities, considered by the advisers to be community service projects, involve hands-on work – gathering brush and tree limbs, raking leaves and building nest boxes – but also help the young people develop skills such as communication and team work.
On Feb. 12, Thomas M. Smith, a state Game Commission land management officer in Lycoming and Union counties, commended the club for the work it did to improve habitat for cottontail rabbits at State Game Lands 252, near Allenwood.
The eighth-graders used Christmas trees that had been donated by area residents and other tree limbs and logs to construct the habitats, which basically are piles of brush.
“Rabbits and other small critters then (use) these brush piles as escape cover from predators and the winter elements,” Smith wrote in his field officer report, which was made public on the commission’s website.
Fishers, mink, hawks and bobcats are just some of the predators that eat rabbits, said club President Troop Miller, 13, of Salladasburg.
“I bet we built 100 (of the habitats) over two years,” he said, adding that he’s already spotted tiny mice making use of the piles.
First, the crew built a 2-foot wide foundation from logs of trees that had been cut down, said Seth Ingraham, 14, of Salladasburg. “Branches and smaller limbs” were piled on top, followed by the pine trees, he said.
While on site, the teens talked with a Game Commission wildlife conservation officer and had a chance to examine a wood duck box and fill it with wood shavings so its next inhabitant had a comfortable place to lay eggs.
Every student who participates in the service projects is allowed to go on a year-end hiking and fishing trip, usually to the Pine Creek area, if their parents approve.
“I really like doing the service projects,” said Brielle Hess, 13, of Avis, who previously had been a member of the school’s C3 Club. She joined Klugh and a handful of other members early last month as they walked a circuit on the high school’s cross-country route where, last year, they’d installed several bluebird boxes.
Working with the high school’s Manufacturing Club, the younger students picked sites, hoisted metal posts and secured 30 nest boxes for the Eastern bluebird or any other bird species that may fit inside. Plans for the boxes were provided by the state Game Commission and Jersey Shore
Steel donated the posts, Klugh said. The students built the boxes at home with the help of their parents.
All 30 houses were set up in one day, and 12 of them were used by pairs of birds.
It was the best project so far, according to Dawson Sechrist, 14, of Salladasburg.
“We were able to skip a half day of school and got to go with the high-schoolers,” said Sechrist, who joined the club last year at the urging of his friends, Seth and Troop. “If you like the outdoors, this is the club to join.”
Most of the club members already have an interest in the great outdoors and its related activities.
“I like fishing, the quietness of it and that it takes patience, and then (when you hook one) it’s exciting,” said Will Frazier, 14, of Linden.
Josh Raymon, 13, of Avis, enjoys the fact that the Outdoors Club gives him a chance to “be active. You get to go outside and do stuff for the community” such as collecting paper and cans for recycling.
Working with older students, such as members of the Jersey Shore Area High School’s own Outdoors Club, is a boon for Ingraham, a third-year member who enjoyed “clearing brush on trails with the older kids” at state game lands near Rauchtown. An avid hunter, he is glad to spend time hanging out with his buddies too.
“We just like to have fun. That’s what it’s all about,” Ingraham said.
Klugh and the other advisers, Michelle Moore and Shawn Weaver, might be glad the students are having fun but they also know they are learning, first-hand, valuable facts about wildlife and the environment and how humans can help – or harm – it.
When the club first was created three years ago, “originally we were looking at doing a vegetable garden around the school,” Klugh said. But that, and some other early ideas for a club focus, didn’t “really satisfy the conservation aspect.”
“These projects – even ones with trail maintenance – increase their awareness of conservation” and what it really means, thanks to the “man-hours they put into it,” he added.
The reality of conservation and trying to improve what’s all around them might become second nature for many of these club members. Take, for instance, Eli Willits, 14, of Jersey Shore. The young hunter, who likes heading afield in search of rabbits and deer, already is eager to help populations of small game.
“It’s really fun,” he said, “and I like to help the environment.”