On December 8, MV Leo Club members are sprawled across the wooden benches by the gardener’s shed at McClellan Ranch Preserve. Laughing, chatting and snacking on fruits and hummus, they wait for other members to show up, before their time volunteering for the Earth Stewards Program begins.
The program, created by an outside organization called Grassroots Ecology, allows members to help out at the McClellan Ranch Preserve, while also learning more about the environment. Events for this ongoing program occur every week, which was what originally sparked Leo Club’s interest in becoming involved with the program.
“The main reason [we] had [Earth Stewards] is because most [events] are just a one time thing,” junior and club secretary Rahul Sawhney said. “I feel like it’s a good idea to have a program where members can keep coming back and it just happens all year long.”
Sawhney isn’t new to the Earth Stewards Program, having clocked in 20 hours last semester for Leo Club at the program. The comfortable environment is one reason he enjoys the experience.
“I just like coming here,” Sawhney said. “It’s pretty laid back, and you’re helping out with the environment.”
The environment at Earth Stewards is also one of the reasons club member and freshman Tiffany Chen decided to get involved.
“This environment is really fun, really relaxing,” Chen said. “It’s finals week right now, and I feel like there’s so much stress right now. I wanted to come out to not only help out with nature but just relax.”
The staff from Grassroots Ecology, the organization that runs the Earth Stewards Program, led volunteers in playing a game called Yee Haw. The bonding activity helped the mix of new and returning volunteers get to know each other better, while also resulting in many laughs across the circle.
Afterwards, members listened as park ranger Ryan Taylor shared more information about his background, as well as what they would be learning about that day.
Taylor has been regularly coming to McClellan Ranch since 2004, when he would visit during his lunch breaks while working at Whole Foods, and studied at schools ranging from places like New Jersey to Mount Shasta. These experiences helped him with his current role as a park ranger, which he greatly enjoys, as he gets the opportunity to be in nature and regularly interact with different people who share the same curiosity and thirst for knowledge. He teaches people of all ages, from the elderly to college students to younger kids, about topics ranging from ethnobotany to firemaking.
On this particular day, Taylor took volunteers in a hike across the preserve, teaching them identification of different plants and wildlife tracking. Wildlife tracking entails studying the different compression shapes of prints left behind and determining what animal family the tracks come from.
Taylor did note that during Friday’s Earth Stewards Program, wildlife tracking would be difficult, since Western Sycamore trees had recently dropped their leaves, and animals step on the leaves instead. During the process, volunteers must pull up the leaves to reveal the partial track, which is harder to identify as there’s less detail in the compression shapes.
In addition to wildlife tracking, the weekly Earth Stewards Program also does activities such as planting native species and fish dissections to learn about the local environment. This is club member and freshman Carly Chang’s favorite aspect of the program.
“I’m really fond of nature,” Chang said. “We learn about nature and [it’s] so cool.”
Through these activities, the Earth Stewards Program aims to not only educate volunteers about the habitats at McClellan Ranch Park but also teach them skills that are applicable in other environments as well.
