Aquatic Macroinvertebrates in the Little Salt River

The school year is almost over, but the past couple of weeks have been among my busiest of the year.  In addition to spending several days doing forestry and forest ecology with classrooms, I have also spent multiple days at the Little Salt River in Shepherd with students collecting and identifying aquatic macroinvertebrates (animals without backbones that live in water and are large enough to see without magnification).  Over the course of the fifteen days I will have spent five days along the river.  Among other things, the students have found hundreds of crayfish, Green Frog tadpoles, dozens of small fish, scud (amphipods), mayfly larvae, damselfly larvae, caddisfly larvae, water mites, and crawling water beetles.  We also found several examples of a species that I had never seen before, Creeping Water Bugs.

 
I have also taken dozens of photos of the students at work.  Most of the students get super involved in the work and their allotted time just flies by.  A lot of words have been written in the past decade or so about the disconnect between children and nature. 

It gives me a lot of hope to see students elbow-deep in a bucket of muddy river water trying to identify snails.  Why does this give me hope.  People who understand things like aquatic macroinvertebrates tend to understand their importance and care about them.  People that care about things like aquatic macroinvertebrates will want to protect them and their habitats.  These kids learning to identify snails today are the land stewards of the future.