Story Photos
 Wahkiakum High School sophomores Ben Miles, left, and Tyler Bryant, right, collect samples of bugs that live in Clear Creek, a tributary of the Elochoman River, for a summer environmental study. Ben is holding the kick net, while Tyler rubs bugs off of rocks and swooshes creek water up onto the net to strain out other samples. They store water and species specimens in plastic tubs to take back to the lab at school. Bill Wagner / The Daily News
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Students spend summer researching Clear Creek
Sunday, August 10, 2008 11:55 PM PDT
By Cathy Zimmerman
Printable version
E-mail this articleTyler Bryant and Ben Miles stand in a rushing stream under a high green canopy of alder, rubbing little bugs off of slippery rocks. They look like any country kids, dawdling away a summer day in a creek.
This, however, is their summer job. And it’s serious scientific research.
“We’re in charge of the macroinvertibrate survey,” Ben said, explaining the study of “little bugs with no backbones that you can see with the naked eye.”
He and Tyler, who are both 15, found plenty of stoneflies in Clear Creek, a tributary of the Elochoman River. Juvenile fish feed on these bugs, “the backbone of the aquatic food chain.” And that means this is a fish-friendly stream.
Evidence of the bugs also is important, “because they’re a pollution-intolerant species. If this water was polluted, we wouldn’t find any. That indicates a very healthy watershed,” Ben said.
Ben, Tyler and six other Wahkiakum High School students just completed a habitat assessment of Clear Creek. The project was paid for with a $62,000 grant from Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. The grant also paid for a second team of teens to work on Grays River.
The student researchers were paid $9 an hour, earned college credit and worked with more than $4,500 worth of equipment — in-kind donations from DeBraie Logging and Hancock Forest Management that the high school gets to keep.
Jeff Rooklidge, WHS biology and environmental science teacher, supervised the team with Heather Ireton, a college intern from Washington State University. Dr. Rob Stockhouse, a botany professor who moved to Puget Island after retirement, plunged into the project with welcome expertise, Rooklidge said.
But it’s the kids, their teacher said, who own this study.
“They’re like detectives,” Rooklidge said. “They spent 90 percent of the project in the field, doing purposeful research.”
They became so proficient, he said, “the head biologist from Fish and Wildlife was calling them to ask questions.”
The teens researched the ecology of the stream — its bordering forest, stream flow and velocity, the water’s average temperature and dissolved oxygen level, percentages of cobbles and gravel in the stream bed and the aquatic food chain teeming through the tributary.
They took samples and studied them in the school lab. They recorded pages of data and with it, made a computer-assisted design, or CAD, of the stream profile that maps its pools and topography.
“We took measures every 2 feet,” said Halie Boyce, who worked on CAD.
Brandi Arness “was all over the place,” she said, taking photos throughout the project. Madeline Rooklidge made a lively video and set it to music, and the team summed up their findings in a PowerPoint presentation to the public Friday.
What the teens discovered on Clear Creek could have a big impact on the rural area they call home.
Cole Claussen, 16, worked on the vegetation survey with other team members.
They stretched a tape measure above their heads, coming down the steep stream bank. Following it underneath, they placed a 1-meter square frame of plastic pipe on the ground. Moving it every 10 feet, they identified ground cover inside it — oxalis, for instance — then shrub plants like salmonberry, then the overstory above it — vine maple and alder.
Leaves drop into the water and feed the bugs.
Rotting snags fall in and dam up little pools for salmonid “redds,” or nests.
And shade cools the stream.
Nicole Hargrove, a Wahkiakum junior, dipped a probe into the water to get a reading on the temperature — 11 Celsius (52 Farenheit) — and the levels of dissolved oxygen — 108.5 percent.
Those are optimum conditions, Rooklidge said. “Salmon are notorious for needing cold, highly oxygenated water.”
Brady Johns, a 17-year-old senior, set up a tripod in the creek with a surveying scope on it. As Nicole held a stadia rod about 20 feet upstream, the two measured the slope, or gradient, of the creek. They did many measurements in the fast-moving creek, moving the tools in increments and doing the math to get a percentage of elevation gain.
If a stream like this has a 20 percent gradient, “fish won’t go up there to lay their eggs,” Brady said. Clear Creek is well below that, so salmon can rush home.
Even chum, Rooklidge said. “Chum are the NFL lineman of fish. Steelhead are the Michael Jordans.”
Cold, not too steep, full of food, with quiet pools where fish “hens” can lay their eggs in a redd: the evidence establishes that this stream is “pristine,” Rooklidge said.
The team also made a less-than-pristine discovery, one that could halt the movement of people and fish both.
Clear Creek runs under the Elochoman Valley Road, and when the kids got down into the water, they investigated the metal culvert that allows the stream to flow underneath the road .
“It’s a nasty culvert,” Brady said. “It’s jagged, it’s got holes, it’s crawling with tetanus. In some places, it’s caved in.”
“A lot of species of salmon will not go through a culvert like that to spawn upstream,” Rooklidge said.
In high water and flooding, the culvert “could wash out,” Tyler said, cutting off the road. “And then no one could get to their houses out here.”
“A lot of logging trucks use this road, too,” added Ireton, the WSU intern.
A new culvert and bridge, the students said, would preserve Clear Creek’s healthy watershed for salmon runs, and also preserve the road that serves households springing up all over the valley.
“We could help the community and the environment,” Cole said.
“If the Public Works Department wants to apply for funding for a bridge and a culvert, they now have the data they need,” Rooklidge said. “This is a big concern in Wahkiakum County, a real economic challenge.”
As Wahkiakum’s fifth environmental summer project came to a close, organizers ladled out credit.
Rooklidge praised Karen Bertroch of the Wahkiakum Community Foundation, who wrote the grants and helped design the project. “She has a heart for kids and for the environment,” he said. “It’s her passion.’
Bertroch called it “truly a countywide affair.”
“We couldn’t do this without the support of the parents,” she said. “They trust us to take their kids out in the woods.”
She also credited DeBraie Logging, Hancock Forest Management, and the logging crews who shared their perspective and experience with the students.
“Our really skilled forestry people are retiring,” Bertroch said. “What will draw young people into working in the woods?
“My dream is to get these kids to go to college, learn the science and forest engineering, and come home. Then they can make the decisions, instead of someone sitting in a cubicle in Olympia.”
As for the young researchers, they deserve kudos for mastering skills their teacher didn’t learn until he was in graduate school, said Rooklidge, who takes his environmental science classes out into the woods year-round.
“This proves to me that all kids are capable of being great learners. We need to move to curriculum that’s hands on. They’re intuitive about the technology; they take to it just like that.”
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