Community Education

Education about the linkages among healthy otters, healthy watersheds, and healthy communities is as important as scientific research and discovery, and perhaps more important and useful to a wider range of people. As Wendell Berry says, “If we were sincerely looking for a place of safety, for real security and success, then we would begin to turn to our communities — and not the communities simply of our human neighbors but also of the water, earth, and air, the plants and animals, all the creatures with whom our local life is shared.” That message resonates deeply with people who are offered concrete examples of nature’s resilience, and our human capacity to mediate environmental mistakes.

Student Interns Savannah and Natalie input camera trap data

Our conservation goal is always to support and expand the public’s understanding of and passion for the natural world.

We accomplish this through education and outreach programs, including:

• Community Science Otter Spotter;
• noninvasive research using camera traps and scat collection;
• high school and college internships;
• public presentations for adults and children;
• tabling at environmental events; and
• partnering with agencies and groups to spread the conservation message.

We provide education for adults and children on the importance of watershed health, using river otters as ambassadors, with the goal of helping support restoration and conservation of wetlands and watersheds.

Education includes:

• classroom presentations,
• field trips,
• tabling at environmental events, and
• public presentations for adults and children.

Please see our Events page for upcoming dates.

Our Hands-on High School Project pairs high school students and scientists, working toward common research goals: to increase our understanding of local river otter population presence, numbers and behavior, predator-prey species interactions, to make available and publicize that information, and to ensure it is used to guide future research and help support conservation.

We offer field study internships for high school and college students.