The Sewee Earth Stewards

Endangered Species Bulletin, Dec, 2004 by Karen Beshears

We've all seen children enthralled when someone brings out an educational animal or when they have the chance to explore on our public lands. They get that wide-eyed look of discovery and you sense that this experience will stay with them for a long time. The Sewee Earth Stewards program is reaching out to students along the coast of South Carolina to give them "discovery moments" and, we hope, an understanding and respect for the mission of the national wildlife refuges (NWRs) found in their own backyards.

Cape Romain NWR joined the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Earth Stewards program in 1998, and over the past six years the refuge has made Sewee Earth Stewards a vibrant, growing environmental education project in conjunction with the Sewee Visitor & Environmental Education Center in Awendaw (a joint venture of Cape Romain and Francis Marion National Forest) and the SEWEE (South Eastern Wildlife and Environment Education) Association, the cooperating association for Cape Romain, Waccamaw, and ACE Basin NWR's. The Ashepoo, Combahee, and Edisto rivers, which give the ACE Basin its name, combine to create one of the largest undeveloped estuaries on the Atlantic Coast.

Our initial project focus was on fifth-grade students in a local rural school. After looking at the state educational standards for that age, we decided to focus on the freshwater wetland habitats abundant in the coastal plain. These areas are important for many migratory birds and our endangered red wolves (Canis rufus). The SEWEE Association hired a teacher to put together the curriculum for this program and guide us through the initial classes with our students. Two years later, after many days of fun and pitfalls, we were able to create a solid set of cross-curriculum lesson plans and figure out how to take up to 50 students into a swamp for hands-on learning activities. Since 2000, the program has grown from the initial school with about 50 students to 8 elementary schools with about 650 students and one middle school with 60 students for this school year.

So, what do our Sewee Earth Stewards do? Throughout the eight-week curriculum, they read books on animals and their habitats; write stories and poems; learn mathematical concepts through measuring mounted alligators and calculating water absorption rates in wetlands experiments; discover animal adaptations and behaviors; and identify interdependent wetland flora and fauna. Since Cape Romain is comprised of salt marsh and barrier islands and must be reached by boat, we have partnered with the Francis Marion National Forest (where the Sewee Center is located) and use a swamp trail on the mainland as our study site. Students have an initial visit to I'on Swamp and use multiple activities to heighten their observation skills. This visit also gives them the context for the activities over the following weeks on the animals and plants they found there. At mid-term, the students and teachers spend a clay at the Sewee Center, where they study several of the habitats found in the coastal plain. They learn about the Red Wolf Recovery Project and the role that Cape Romain plays in that by visiting our Red Wolf enclosure. They experience the raptors of our area by participating in a program by the South Carolina Center for Birds of Prey. At the end of their studies, they revisit I'on Swamp for their "research" trip, where they find and identify macroinvertebrate aquatic species. By the end of the term, our students know more about alligators, turtles, snakes, red wolves, migratory birds, birds of prey, invertebrate species, and freshwater wetland habitats.

Two years ago, we were able to expand this program to seventh-graders and create a new curriculum focusing on salt marsh and barrier island habitats. These students are able to use the concessionaire's ferry to study on Bulls Island within Cape Romain and experience one of the few undeveloped islands along our coast. In 2003, Waccamaw NWR asked the SEWEE Association to expand the elementary program into its region, and we are now hosting the first students to this relatively new refuge with few modifications.

Since 1999, nearly 1,700 students have become Sewee Earth Stewards, and more than 700 others will be in the program this year. That's a lot of students, teachers, and parents who have had an incredible learning experience with Cape Romain and Waccamaw NWR's and have a better understanding of the role of the refuge system as it relates to South Carolina.

Karen Beshears is the Executive Director of the SEWEE Association, the cooperating association for the National Wildlife Refuges of Coastal South Carolina. She can be reached at sewee.association@earthlink.net.