St. Matthew’s has Council with Council Creek

Written by SOLVE Jesuit Volunteer Corps Northwest member Charlie

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The 8th-graders from St. Matthew’s School in Hillsboro made a trek out to Council Creek this morning to explore, help, and learn from their local watershed.

Students first had the opportunity to explore the macroinvertebrate community living in the creek. Aquatic bugs are a good indication of stream health as some insects we know to be pollution insensitive. The presence or lack thereof of these invertebrates can give us clues to how much the water in Council Creek is polluted. Using a Pollution Tolerance Index to score for the stream’s health based on the richness of orders of invertebrates they found, students discovered that the stream was hovering just above the “poor” rating. Nevertheless we did discover some pretty awesome inverts, such as the scorpion-like damselfly larvae, the shy case making caddisfly larvae, and leeches!

Empowered to help these little guys out and to improve the watershed, students then helped maintain some of the native plants their classmates had planted earlier in the year by staking biodegradable coffee bags around them. This will help suppress aggressive invasive plants like reed canary grass from completely choking them out this summer. While they were busy coffee bagging, we discovered about 50 plants that had been placed out to be planted but overlooked by a previous volunteer group. The St. Matthew’s all-star 8th-graders went above and beyond their call of duty and took it upon themselves to get these plants in the ground.

The students also took some time to reflect on why it is important to be planting these natives and helping them grow, fostering a healthy riparian zone. They played a game in which they were given random every day objects (ice cube tray, coffee filters, etc.)and came up with how those objects are a metaphor for a healthy riparian zone (ice cubes cool our water, like shade in a riparian zone, coffee filters filter out sediment from water, like the plants in a healthy riparian zone, etc).

Thanks for all of your hard work, and we look forward to working with several of you in the future as we found out that many of you will be attending schools in the area who have SOLVE Green Teams like Forest Grove High, Glencoe High, and Valley Catholic!

Thanks to Clean Water Services for funding this project!

St. Matthews at Council Creek

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Early Wednesday morning, a bus full of 30 St. Matthew’s School 6th graders pulled up to Ryland Park overlooking Council Creek. Upon just glancing at this site, all of the students could tell that a lot of work needed to be done. A sea of invasive reed canary grass sprawled out before them, with a few native trees and shrubs, just barely hanging on. There were no trees shading the creek, no deep roots stopping soil from eroding away, no biodiversity of any kind to invite local wildlife to use this natural space as a place for food or shelter, just a desert of grass.

Once they saw what they were up against, the plucky kids from St. Matthews picked up their tools and got to work. Some got to work planting willow and ash trees. However, the grass had created a thick shallow root mat that one needed to chop through to even get to the soil below, it was hard work, and if you weren’t careful, the mud got the better of you (as some students quickly discovered). Meanwhile, another group was scouring the site for some healthy dogwood and willow trees to take branches from which to make stakes to stake in the ground. These living stakes will take root and propagate into new trees, creating that nice shade and deep root systems that this creek so desperately needs.

After 2 hours of hard work, and nearly 150 new plants in the ground to show for it, these students really made a huge difference in the future of Council Creek. Thanks St. Matthews!

Tigers, Bears and St. Matthew’s 7th Graders!

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Just 24 hours after students were introduced to the concepts of a watershed in our classroom presentation, students from St. Matthews put their new knowledge to use.  After learning about the ways in which tall native trees shade our creek and keep it cool and full of dissolved oxygen, and why we want to minimize the amount of invasive species at Council Creek, students eagerly got to work.   The part of Council Creek we are restoring is just beyond Ryland Park in Cornelius.

We played a fun Riparian Metaphor game where students had to call upon concepts regarding watersheds and riparian corridors to link them to the various objects they were given.  Students broke up into groups to brainstorm then came back together to report their thought processes.  It was so inspiring to hear the awesome ideas everyone came up with.  Very nice job, St. Matthews!

We also laid down coffee bags and put biodegradable stakes in the corners to prevent invasive species such as reed canary grass from growing next to our native trees and shrubs.  When we announced a 15 minute break midway through the morning, a few students even opted to keep coffee bagging!  It was great to see students having fun while restoring their creek!  We even found some woolly bear caterpillars that will turn into tiger moths!

Lastly, we crossed the creek and discovered a big and beautiful Willow tree just waiting for us to help it multiply.  We did this by cutting a few branches off of this mature tree and cutting them down to the perfect size to make a new tree with.  It is so amazing that when put into the ground, a branch of a willow tree will propagate a whole new tree!  We planted our new stakes along the creek and hopped back on the bus.

It was a productive, eventful, and very fun morning at Council Creek!

Isabella Tiger Moth