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Welcome to the Third Annual
Gunnison Water Festival!


Spring is a time for water to take center stage: snowmelt runs from the mountains, irrigation ditches open up, rafting and fishing enthusiasts appear, April showers lead the way for May flowers - you get the idea! To celebrate the importance of water in our society, each year Colorado's Gunnison Resource and Environmental Education Network (GREEN) holds its Water Festival, an environmental education field day for all the 4th-graders in the Gunnison River Valley.

GREEN is a joint effort conducted by a variety of natural resource agencies that have a mutual interest in well-balanced environmental education. The Bureau of Land Management's Gunnison Field Office is an active participant in this group, which also includes the National Park Service, National Forest Service, State Forest Service, State Division of Wildlife, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Colorado State University (CSU) Extension and Research Lab, Western State College, and the Gunnison County Weed Office. The group works together on a variety of education projects for both children and adults.

Festival organizers prepared the students for their field day with classroom presentations early in the week; these sessions helped to lay the groundwork for what was to come in the field. On Friday, May 19, 2000, students were split into manageable groups ("manageable" being a relative term when applied to 4th-graders in the outdoors!). They were then run through six stations covering a variety of water-related topics in a park and riparian area close to their school.
BLM's Sally Pfrimmer worked with the Wildlife staff to give kids an idea of the trials that a Kokanee Salmon must endure to make it to adulthood. Dams, predators, fishermen, food supply, habitat quality, etc., all interacted to pose challenges to survival in this role-playing exercise.

Dr. Pat McGee of Western State College used "the water trailer" model to teach students about flowing water. He began by identifying different parts of the watershed system. Then he turned on the pump to send water flowing down the river. Modifying environmental factors along the river helped students to see the different effects that water can have. When riparian vegetation was removed, for example, they saw a dramatic increase in erosion and sedimentation. Similar lessons were learned about the effects of dams, irrigation, channelization, and development along river corridors.


Festival organizers made sure to plan some playtime to help the kids burn off energy during the day. The recess sessions incorporated games that reinforced some of the resource messages of the day. In one such game, the students got to play beavers and trappers.

Mike Johnson of the National Park Service ran some young "pioneer trappers" through traplines so they could see the effects of heavy predation on beaver populations. Other students played beavers; they searched for tokens that represented food in some cases, and traps in others.

The BLM station focused on River Recreation and Leave No Trace camping in river corridors. Recreation staffers Arden Anderson and Sally Thode taught kids how to take care of the resources in riparian areas while enjoying them.

In one exercise, each kid was given a pin flag and asked to imagine that he or she had to go to the bathroom. They placed the flags in places they thought would be good for that purpose. Festival staff then discussed with students the best ways to dispose of human waste. The flags were left in place so following groups could see the cumulative effects of many recreationists using one area.

Sally explained the impacts caused by campfires. She taught students the importance of using a camp stove for cooking, and discussed ways to build a fire without causing impacts.

The National Park Service brought in an all-knowing "Water Wizard" especially for this occasion. The kids were asked questions about basic water concepts. and got either prizes or a blast from the Super Soaker (water gun) depending on the accuracy of their answers.

Adena Green of the Gunnison County Weed Office helped kids learn about riparian plant communities. They identified plants, discussed the animals that use these rich habitats and the problems that can be caused by introduced weeds.

The sixth station was jointly run by the Natural Resources Conservation Service and CSU Extension to teach the students about irrigation ditches and techniques.

The day concluded with a huge "game show" pitting students against teachers and the resource experts from GREEN. The difficulty of questions varied with the groups, and the Water Wizard made sure the experts had some devilishly hard questions. The students roared out to an early lead, but the teachers and the GREEN teams pulled even to end the contest with a tie. It was a perfect end to the day!

The teachers in Colorado school systems are required to cover standardized curriculum topics at every level. To increase the effectiveness of the messages in the Festival, the GREEN group correlated all the environmental messages taught that day with the standard curriculum required for 4th-grade students in science, math, social studies, and civics. In effect, Festival themes were adapted to incorporate curriculum standards. Taking these extra steps offers more incentive for the teachers to work with Festival organizers. The agencies can communicate messages on resource management and stewardship while the teachers are covering topics essential to their curriculum. A short post-test was used at the end of the day to help Festival organizers evaluate how much of the messages was being retained.

GREEN was formed because all of us together can do more than any of us can separately. Events such as the Gunnison Water Festival clearly prove that point!

To find out more about the BLM Gunnison Field Office and GREEN, please contact Arden Anderson at BLM-Gunnison Field Office, 216 N. Colorado, Gunnison, CO 81230; e-mail Arden_Anderson@blm.gov, or telephone (970) 641-0471.

GREEN is featured in the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse (ENC) for Mathematics and Science Education's Guidebook of Federal Resources for K-12 Mathematics and Science. Please visit the ENC website at http://www.enc.org/guidebook/state/co.htm for additional information.

Last Updated: July 15, 2003

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