The participants were comprised of two classes of 20 bilingual students that are considered ?at-risk? due to poor English reading skills. This presented a special situation in respect to program design. Two in-school programs were presented, one to familiarize the students about Monument history, resources and management, and another to outline field trip protocols. During the day-long field session, each class conducted a terrestrial inventory or an aquatic survey in the morning and rotated in the afternoon.

Refuge Operations Specialist Jack Heisler had his terrestrial groups conduct a line-point indicator inventory in shrub-steppe habitat. The first area was recorded in undisturbed shrub-steppe habitat and the other in a disturbed site with heavy cheatgrass infestation. The goals achieved included an understanding of the composition of shrub-steppe habitat, annual cheatgrass versus perennial bunchgrass, plant diversity, disturbance and the interdependence of habitat species. Crouse organized the aquatic sampling inventory using juvenile fish and macroinvertebrates. The students, armed with kick nets and beach seines, swept the Columbia River and Spring Creek in search of life under the water. Following collections, students recorded their catch using identification manuals and dissecting scopes to record numbers of each species. The goals achieved for this unit were the comparison of species diversity and density between the river and the stream and to relate those figures to tolerance indices for pollution to determine a level of water quality for both habitats.

The project was a success with excellent feedback from both the students and instructors. Most enjoyable was an opportunity to study the unique plants of the shrub-steppe and strap on waders to catch their 'salmon.? For Monument staff, it proved an enlightening experience to provide a chance to do scientific investigations with a group of ?at-risk? students who would otherwise never experience the Monument from a biological perspective.