How long does it take for a ponderosa pine forest to recover from a fire?
Students in the Earth studies program at the Mountain Park Environmental Center near Beulah are beginning to find out.
A lightning strike started the Mason Gulch Fire on July 8 in the San Isabel National Forest. When the fire was finally contained July 17, more than 11,300 acres of forest had burned.
Yet, less than a week after the fire was extinguished, the landscape already had started to regrow. Thin blades of grass pushed through the scorched soil. Dozens of dogbane plants were blooming. Gambel oak leaves sprouted from the barren ground.
“I couldn’t believe how much change occurred in six days,” says Dave Van Manen, Mountain Park’s founder, director and author of the field guide “Plants of Pueblo Mountain Park.” His visit to the burn site sparked an idea.
He plotted three, 15-meter squares at burned areas to use as an outdoor laboratory. During the school year, about 200 fifth-grade students from Pueblo will visit the site to witness the effects of a wildland fire first-hand.
For Manuel Zegarelli, 11, from Beulah Heights Elementary, the Earth studies program means “we kids can study nature in the wilderness, not in a science book or magazine. It feels really good to be out in nature and to feel the warm breeze in your hair.”
Mountain Park began providing environmental education programming in March 2000. Located in the Pueblo park of the same name, Mountain is a nonprofit organization that helps people of all ages build a connection to the natural world.
Earth studies is just one of several school programs that encourages students to become naturalists. Throughout the year, each class spends seven days studying ecosystems, insects, trees, geology, ponds, mammals, and birds. The 611-acre Mountain Park serves as their classroom.
The Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education recognized Earth studies with the 2003 Best New Program award. Grants from foundations, the City and County of Pueblo, School District 60, and membership fees support the Mountain Park center.
Ecological literacy is its mission. “It’s vitally important to get kids turned on to the natural world,” Van Manen says. “We have major environmental issues, such as land use and species habitat. How do you make informed decisions about these issues if you don’t know how the natural world works?”
The wildland fire unit starts with students riding a bus to the burn site, 20 minutes from Pueblo Mountain Park. After hiking a half-mile up a steep hill, they observe, take notes and compare signs of life in each burn area.
In the lightly burned section they can see how ground cover already has returned. The oak leaves are brown, but still on the trees. There are grasses, yarrow, mugwort, and dandelions. Ponderosa pine trees still are alive, although flames climbed several feet up the trunks.
At the border where the lightly burned forest meets the moderately burned, the students’ observation skills are tested. They have to look carefully to see small plants growing close to the ground.
“In one square yard there are six different species of plants to identify,” Van Manen says.
Anne Warren, a teacher at South Park Elementary and a Mountain Park board member was impressed with the amount of growth in the severely burned area. “It was such a bleak landscape, the trees looked like blackened toothpicks. But we could see sprigs of mountain mahogany and gambel oak on the hillside. The kids found a ladybug on a leaf. It was amazing to see life in such a dead-looking environment.”
After viewing the devastation fire can cause, students are challenged to answer the question, “Is a wildland fire good or bad?”
Angelica Lara, 11, from Beulah Heights knows the answer. “From this day, I now know fire is also good,” she writes.
“Fire is one of the natural components of an ecosystem,” Van Manen says. “Students learn that it’s a necessary part of the cycle of a forest.” Many ecosystems rely on fire in order to stay healthy.
Chris Markert is a fifth-grade teacher at Somerlid Elementary and has been involved in the Earth studies program for three years. He says he learns something new every time his class visits the Mountain Park.
“I’m a believer in experiential learning,” he says. “Instead of reading what a forest fire does, the kids get the chance to actually see and be in an area that’s had a fire. They can see the fire lines firefighters created and see the results of the fire.”
Markert says that examining what the fire did to trees, rocks, and even dirt, makes a big impression on his students. The experience translates into more vivid writing and a stronger text-to-me connection, he says.
“Most people think environmental education is all science,” Van Manen says. “But the natural world is a phenomenal catalyst for teaching so many subjects, like math, language arts, social studies, and even music.”
For example, the unit on trees uses science to identify the kind of tree, math to figure its age, and language arts to imagine what the tree would say if it could talk.
But environmental issues, like global warming and logging, aren’t included in the discussion. Van Manen believes the initial work should focus on helping children learn to feel comfortable in the natural world.
“Kids should be able to sit on the ground and not be afraid that all insects will bite them or that all sounds in the forest are from predators that will jump out and eat them.”
Without the Mountain Park center, some of these students might not have the chance for such outdoor experiences. The five schools involved in the program have a high percentage of students who qualify for free or reduced-price school lunches.
“At first the kids are a little hesitant, some have never been to the mountains,” board member Warren says. “Some are afraid because they don’t know what to expect, but that first trip is powerful. It opens their eyes to the world.”
She says that before her class visited the burn site, they thought all forest fires were bad. “Now they can tell you why fire is sometimes good, especially when it occurs naturally. They learned things that the majority of adults don’t know.”
