Our environmental education grants program once again accepted applications from all across the country from innovative and effective programs that help foster environmental awareness and protection efforts.

In 2002, 11 grants were awarded nationwide totaling approximately $97,000. The grants support environmental awareness and innovation among 15,000 young people in nine states. Examples of grant award recipients follow.

• Coastline Environmental Trail Restoration, McKinleyville, California
  Approximately 2,000 students, ages five – 18, will work to replace and restore non-native, invasive flora with native species along a 1.25-mile section of the Pacific Northwest Coastline. Students will participate in all aspects of the study, design and implementation of the project.
• Waste Management Program, Simi Valley, California
  More than 600 elementary school students will implement a waste management program, in which they analyze and collect data from the school’s cafeteria trash output to determine how much of the waste can be recycled through the use of worms.
• Ecological Heritage and Restoration, Texas
  Students Engaged in Restoring Vital Environments (Project S.E.R.V.E.) will educate students in environmental stewardship, ecology and ecological restoration by constructing an ecologically correct outdoor classroom. About 750 students from K-12 will benefit from this outdoor classroom.
• Environmental Monitoring, Portland, Oregon
  Through the Environmental Monitoring project, high school students will develop the skills to design and implement controlled outdoor field experiments involving water, chemistry, environmental studies, biology and ecology. Students will also undertake an environmental monitoring project with the City of Portland Bureau of Environmental Services to study the natural environment of a restored site adjacent to a local water source.
• Coral Reef Propogation, LaGrangeville, New York
  High school students will develop methods for growing and propagating coral reef organisms, such as coral, fish and algae in the classroom to study threatened organisms and habitats. More than 500 students will have the opportunity to participate in the program, where they will also be taught to assess previous research, develop their own experiments and interpret results.