It’s a warm, overcast day in July.  The clouds are sprinkling rain as steam begins to rise from the compost piles out on UNH’s Kingman Farm.  However, the heat, rain and smell don’t stop a small group of high school student interns from New York City as they dig through the last remaining piles of quarantined oyster shells.

Hailing from the High School for Environmental Studies in Manhattan, the three youths and their mentor have spent four weeks in New Hampshire helping The Nature Conservancy with an array of hands-on projects throughout the state.  They also take time to visit colleges in New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts.

Today the interns are looking for shells that are intact and well-sized to accommodate oyster spat for the Oyster Restoration Program.  After they are picked out of the dirt, the shells are handed off to Xiera Villaneuva, a student from the Bronx, who scrubs off the excess dirt and debris.  Once the shells are clean and dry, epoxy will be used to attach juvenile oysters, which will grow on the hard surface.

Xiera, Paulette, Agueda and their mentor, Maya, are part of a program involving 36 New York City students or recent graduates participating in Nature Conservancy projects in seven states throughout the Northeast. For many, the program offers kids their first in-depth experience of natural environments. Launched in 1995, the program is a partnership with the Friends of the High School for Environmental Studies and the Brooklyn Academy of Science and the Environment. Over the past 14 years, more than 230 high school students have participated in the program.

The program sends students in groups of three with trained mentors on a four-week field season, where they live and work on Conservancy preserves in seven Northeastern states: (New York, Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania). Conservancy staff teach the students basic land management, educational outreach and scientific research skills in a safe and supervised learning environment. The interns also enjoy other first-time activities, such as camping, kayaking, and swimming.

In New Hampshire, the students spent their first two weeks assisting Conservancy staff with various tasks in the Mount Washington Valley and Northern Forest.  They pulled invasive plants like Japanese knotweed at Garland Pond, cleaned water bars along trails at Black Cap Mountain, hung trail signs at the Green Hills Preserves and worked on trails at the Fourth Connecticut Lake and Ossipee Pine Barrens Preserves.  The second half of the trip was spent in southern New Hampshire, where the girls repaired bog bridges at the Loverens Mill Preserve, pulled invasive plants around Great Bay and assisted in preparing oysters for deployment to the oyster conservationists.

It’s not always “all work and no play” though.  The Mount Washington Observatory gave the interns a tour of the facility that tops the northeast’s highest peak.  They also hiked to the Mount Magalloway Fire Tower, swam in Ossipee Lake at Camp Calumet and canoed the Saco River with TNC’s Saco River Project Director Stefan Jackson.  While touring UNH’s Jackson Estuarine Laboratory in Durham, the students came up close and personal with horseshoe crabs and lobsters during an impromptu lesson on crustaceans with lab director Dave Shay. 

"Many of these students rarely get the opportunity to spend extended time in nature and explore colleges outside of the city," said Brigitte Griswold, the internship's manager for the Conservancy. "Through this internship program, the Conservancy hopes to encourage a new generation of conservationists by providing these young people with their first direct and meaningful experience in the natural world." 

Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo © Wink Lees/TNC (Paulette, Agueda, Xiera, Maya and TNC Steward, Tim Sullivan, stand at the US/Canada border at the Fourth Connecticut Lake Preserve, Pittsburg, NH); Photo © Megan Lepage (Xiera prepares quaratined oyster shells for the Oyster Restoration Project, Durham, NH).