Join Jack in June for his Walk into Summer series . Find the schedule with details here!

Associated Press • June 5, 2017 • S

 Thursday, June 1st at 5:30pm

Meet at Picture Canyon Parking Area

Map depicting the Rio de Flag FUTS Extension Project (outlined in red).
Source: Coconino County Public Works

The Flagstaff Urban Trail System provides a transportation and recreation corridor for Flagstaff residents. In addition, the FUTS snakes through Flagstaff open spaces used by many different wildlife species.

Join us on Thursday, June 1 at 5:30pm with James Guidotti, Coconino County Public Works Capital Project Manager, for a walking tour of the recently completed Rio de Flag FUTS Extension Project. James and representatives from the local firm, WLB Group, Inc., will discuss the goals of the project including restoring the canyon slopes so that they emulate the natural surrounding landscape of the area.

Join us next Thursday, June 1st for our first field trip meeting of the summer! We will meet at 5:30pm at the Picture Canyon parking area (see map of parking) and walk to the site.

Tristan Meriwether and David McKee celebrate Tristan’s completion of a monarch butterfly way station.

Congratulations to Tristan Meriwether on completing his Eagle Scout Service Project! Tristan’s project requirements included planning, developing and implementing a service beneficial to his community. Tristan took on a large scale project of creating a Monarch Butterfly Waystation.

The City of Flagstaff built a large earthen embankment with the material removed from the restoration of Frances Short Pond. This embankment serves as a buffer between the fire department training center and the Rio de Flag. Tristan started out by recruiting fellow scouts, friends and family to first complete extensive grading work to naturalize the earthwork then prepare it for planting. He learned first about invasive weeds and proper techniques for stabilization to prevent erosion. Tristan then worked with the city and local native nurseries to obtain the proper seeds and plants for the waystation. As Tristan learned, this includes a full spectrum of plants that provide breeding habitat as well as fuel for their migration. The Southwest Monarch Study website provided a specialized list adapted for high elevation waystations.

Tristan also learned that native plants can take a long time to become established (often a couple years). The great news was that we saw plenty of starts and the grasses were already coming up and outcompeting much of the invasive weed population and stabilizing the slopes and denuded areas. We are all looking forward to visiting the site after a full year of growth.

Great Job Tristan!

Waystations have been completed in the Verde Valley and at the Flagstaff Arboretum. To learn more about the Monarch Butterfly Waystation project and how you can create one in your community or right at home visit the Southwest Monarch Study.

Join Jack this month for walking, biking, and his Rio de Flag series. Find the schedule with details here!

The Rio connects Flagstaff, and we can use it for collaborative educational purposes.
Photo: Chelsea describes watershed features during Earth Day, April 22nd, 2017. Photo courteous of Anya Nova Metcalfe.

Instituting FEET: Flagstaff Environmental Education Team

Speaker: Dr. Neil Cobb, NAU Research Professor and Director of the Merriam-Powell Center for Environmental Research

Thursday, May 4th at 6pm

Montoya Community Center

As America’s 1st STEM Community, Flagstaff is poised to integrate a robust education-outreach program that will take advantage of the 20+ STEM-oriented local organizations and schools, by engaging students in science through inquiry-based curricula and activities.

Join us on Thursday, May 4th as we hear from Dr. Neil Cobb on Instituting FEET: the Flagstaff Environmental Education Team. Neil is a research professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Northern Arizona University and Director of the Merriam-Powell Center for Environmental Research.

In coordination with organizations throughout Flagstaff, including the Friends of the Rio de Flag, Neil is leading the FEET team to engage the community in local education, research, and restoration.

We hope to see you next Thursday, May 4th to hear from Neil, and to find out how the Friends of the Rio de Flag can best participate in FEET

Chelsea points out watershed features during Earth Day 2017 at Heritage Square. Photo courteous of Anya Nova Metcalfe.

Dear friends and family,

I am overjoyed to announce that last week we met and surpassed our fundraising goal to support my second service term with the Friends of the Rio de Flag! I am very grateful for all of your support and can’t wait to spend another year giving back to this amazing community.

If you have not already, I invite you to join us for a public meeting on the first Thursdays of the month at 6pm at the Montoya Community Center (245 N Thorpe Rd). Every month we invite a different speaker to share information about ongoing projects in our watershed and other watersheds throughout Arizona. In addition, we host volunteer events during the year that we post to our website (www.friendsoftheriodeflag.org) and our Facebook page.

I can’t thank you enough for your support for this project, and I look forward to sharing my progress over the course of the next year as I seek to provide outdoor, place-based experiences for youth in the community. And hopefully one day we’ll see these youth pursuing local careers that act to both strengthen our community and protect and restore our local watershed.

During our last week of the Rio Awareness, we introduced citizen science and its importance in protecting and restoring habitat for the benefit of wildlife and people alike. Stay in touch as we develop our own citizen science projects to collect data along the Rio de Flag! We will be rolling out these projects over the summer so that you can contribute your scientific observations about the Rio de Flag to our watershed planning efforts.

See you next time along the Rio!

Sincerely,

Chelsea

Chelsea explains her progress over the last eight months on building the Adopt the Rio program during a membership meeting in early April, 2017.

With less than a week left of our fundraising campaign we’ve raised over 80% of our goal to support another year for our VISTA member, Chelsea. Please help us meet this goal before April 22nd by visiting our GoFundMe page, “Discovering Science along the Rio“. Thank you to all the friends and family who have helped us support Chelsea and her work!

Last week during our Rio Awareness campaign we focused on the importance of groundwater to our community and the Southwest in general. Groundwater provides environmental flows for creeks and gives of people the ability to inhabit arid regions of the nation.

We spent the first three weeks of our campaign focused on sources of water including springs, lakes, groundwater, and reclaimed water. This week and the coming week we focus on water users and their importance to the watershed.

People, wildlife, and plants make up the users of our watershed. While wildlife and plants use the watershed, people make decisions that affect the state of the watershed and, for that matter, the states of wildlife and plant life.

In order to sustainably manage our watershed, we must first understand its current state. For this reason, the Friends of the Rio de Flag is promoting youth education through the Adopt-the-Rio de Flag Stewardship program. Youth and community members alike will be better adapted to address pressing environmental issues if they understand their place and responsibility in the complex system that is a watershed.

Follow us on Facebook during our fundraising campaign to discover something new about the Rio every day!