The Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance named the Lower Fox River Watershed Alliance program a 2018 Watershed Hero Impact Awardee. The school monitoring network is administered by UW-Green Bay’s Natural and Applied Sciences (NAS) program and the Cofrin Center for Biodiversity. The 2018 Watershed Celebration was at the Lambeau Field Atrium, Tuesday, March 6.

Accepting the award for UW-Green Bay was Kevin Fermanich, along with high school partners Lynn Terrien, Green Bay Southwest; Charlie Frisk, Luxemburg-Casco (retired) and Ryan Marx, Appleton East.

The Lower Fox River Monitoring Program is a network of teachers and students from 11 area high schools that monitor seven environmentally impaired streams in the Fox River watershed for water quality and ecological health. The students and teachers take on the role of scientists and explore local streams and waterways, in partnership with the scientific community. Standardized methods and annual teacher training sessions allow students to collect quality-assured data in their watersheds. The data provides a measurement of pollution that flows to the Fox River and Bay of Green Bay. This runoff pollution is the type of pollution that contributes to the much publicized “dead zone” in the bay of Green Bay.

Beyond the innovative educational benefits the program provides students, the community is provided with with crucial data about water quality that can be used to assess long-term trends and evaluate restoration efforts.

The program, launched in 2003, is celebrating its 15 year. Currently, 11 high schools, including 17 teachers and more than 80 students participate in the program, with close to 1,000 students having participated in the program since its inception.

The Watershed Heroes Impact Award recognizes individuals and organizations who have lived or worked within the Fox-Wolf watershed communities and who have excelled in any one of the following areas:

  • Providing leadership in working towards sustainable development of our economies and resources.
  • Inspiring the work of others, including our youth, to foster the health of the Fox-Wolf watershed’s communities, economies, and cultures.
  • Extraordinary focus on improving agriculture land use decisions to restore and protect our watershed.
  • Utilizing innovative strategies or outstanding effort to achieve significant results in furthering sustainable development within the watershed.
  • Demonstrating a lasting commitment to the health and management of our watershed resources.

Re-posted, with permission, from “Inside UW-Green Bay News”