Lander Middle School Students Wrap up River Project

LANDER, WYO — Friday brought beautiful weather and buses full of eager Lander Middle School students to the banks of the Little Popo Agie River. All afternoon the students, with direction from NOLS instructors, Popo Agie Anglers volunteers, Trout Unlimited representatives, Wyoming Game and Fish Department employees, and Popo Agie Conservation District members, planted 700 willow cuttings to stabilize the river’s banks.

The event took place at a Red Canyon Public Fishing Access fishing access adjacent to the Wyss Wilderness Medicine Campus and was the second and final step in the Red Canyon River Bank Stabilization project. Like the first step—harvesting the willows on April 3, Friday’s community effort included a number of educational facets for the young volunteers, ranging from fly fishing to GPS navigation, from aquatic biology to ways to prevent snakebites.

The willows will serve to stabilize the river banks and provide protection for the river’s fish populations. Read more about the project in this NOLS blog post.

About NOLS 

Founded in 1965 by legendary mountaineer Paul Petzoldt, NOLS is the leader in wilderness education, providing awe-inspiring, transformative experiences to more than 15,000 students each year. These students, ages 14 to 70, learn in the wildest and most remote classrooms worldwide—from the Amazon rain forest, to rugged peaks in the Himalaya, to Alaskan glaciers and Arctic tundra. Graduates are active leaders with lifelong environmental ethics and outdoor skills. NOLS also offers customized courses through NOLS Professional Training, and the Wilderness Medicine Institute of NOLS is the leading teacher of wilderness medicine worldwide. For more information, call (800) 710-NOLS (6657) or visit nolseduuat.nols.edu