Last month, Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge went beyond just connecting kids with nature.  Through an innovative Challenge Cost Share project, kids were also connected with students from different cultures as well as professional scientists.  The Shorebird Marathon project brought together students from the Bering Sea Yup’ik Eskimo village of Kwigillingok with students from both Anchorage and northern California.  Together with their teachers and professional scientists, the six junior high students spent a week at a remote field camp on the refuge, learning about how shorebirds prepare for and then complete migrations that span the hemispheres.

The Shorebird Marathon team was based at Aropuk Lake, the most important post-breeding staging area for Hudsonian Godwits west of Hudson Bay.  FWS biologist Jim Johnson (Migratory Bird Management—Anchorage), an expert on Hudsonian Godwits, joined the expedition to share his experiences capturing and banding godwits in South America with the students.  Amazingly, one of the godwits that Johnson had color-marked thousands of kilometers away in Chile just a few months earlier was seen during the project at Aropuk Lake. Our other adult participants also brought a wealth of expertise to the project. The principal investigators of the Pacific Shorebird Migration Project, Robert E. Gill, Jr. (U.S. Geological Survey, Alaska Science Center) and Nils Warnock (formerly PRBO Conservation Science, now Univ. of California at Davis), taught students how to capture, band, and record data for shorebirds.  Students learned how use both mist-nets and walk-in traps to catch turnstones, sandpipers, and phalaropes.  One of the Western Sandpipers captured by the students had actually been banded by Warnock and his colleagues in California several years earlier.  Gill also gave a PowerPoint presentation in one of the camp’s gazebo tents, using the back of the Service’s Connecting Kids with Nature banner as a screen.  He summarized the work that the Pacific Shorebird Migration Project has done using satellite transmitters to track Bar-tailed Godwits and Bristle-thighed Curlews as they migrate for days across the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  Science teachers Andrea Pokrzywinski (Lower Kuskokwim School District) and Ayme Johnson (Highland Tech High School) designed and led several exercises on topics such as wildlife observation, data collection, and data analysis.

Just as importantly, the students taught one another about many aspects of the culture in their respective communities.  By swapping stories comparing Western and Native traditions, urban vs. rural life, and experiences in Alaska vs. the Lower 48, the students came to a better understanding of both the natural world and the human communities that depend on it.  With the help of their high school teachers, the students teamed up to draft a brief video describing their experiences and what they learned during their Shorebird Marathon adventure.  The first version of their video can be viewed on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv73J6-bRRM.