Elementary School Students Participate in Restoration Project at Lake Berryessa, California

On Wednesday, February 4, 2009, the 3rd, 4th and 5th grade students of Capell Valley Elementary School arrived ready to feel the earth beneath their fingernails and eager to help restore native grasses to the Lake Berryessa Visitor Center. As part of Take Pride in America, 14 students and 3 adults participated in a Reclamation sponsored project to rehabilitate the area’s natural vegetation and to resurrect a piece of California’s “herbaceous heritage,” while at the same time controlling erosion and the encroachment of invasive weeds. The students took up their work enthusiastically, digging holes and gently planting plugs of native fescue, purple needle grass and soap plant. Learning that the native bunch grasses being planted were perennial gave the students a feeling of pride that their efforts would continue to prosper through the years. The sense of a lasting contribution even gave a few students a desire to name individual grass bunches so that “Fred the Fescue” could be checked up on at a later date.