Naturally useful
Posted on Monday, September 3, 2007
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Style/200440/
On a recent muggy afternoon along the Kingfisher
Trail at Pinnacle Mountain State Park, Vera Bowie
plunged her legs into a pair of rubber boots and
waded into the Little Maumelle River where it snakes along the trail. The water had receded into the fetid repose of summer’s end, but the scum disturbed by her stride created a wide canvas for her inspection. Using a net she had constructed from a branch, a coat hanger and delicate white netting more at home in a craft-store aisle dedicated to do-it-yourself brides, Bowie ran her tool along the muddy bed, then sifted away the sediment to reveal a trio of slick mussel shells. From the bank, Ann Owen craned her neck to see Bowie’s finds. An onlooker to the women’s stream-panning asked whether they replaced the bugs and mollusks turned up by their search once they had cataloged them. “Usually, we eat them,” Owen replied. Owen’s joke — it was a joke ! — injected a moment of levity into an otherwise sweaty, mucky mission. But it also spoke to a general confusion about their purpose for going into the state’s protected forests, deviating from the trails marked for the public and getting their hands and feet dirty. Bowie and Owen are Central Arkansas Master Naturalists, formally trained and certified docents of the outdoors who volunteer to build and maintain trails, monitor for stream pollution and answer visitors’ wildlife questions at Pinnacle Mountain State Park, North Little Rock’s Burns Park and, through sister organizations, in Crossett and throughout the Ozarks. But the “Master” part of their title — a nod to the 40 hours of instruction that conferred their designation — often gets them confused with the Master Gardener program of the state’s Cooperative Extension Service. They don’t mind: One-third of the organization’s pilot class of Master Naturalist trainees in 2006 were also Master Gardeners.
“Some people think we’ll come out and plant a garden for you,” Bowie said. “We will, but only if you don’t mind it being all native plants.”
And the “Naturalist” part of the name gets them confused with hippies or even nudists. Once again — no sweat.
“Whatever it takes to attract people,” Owen said with a shrug and a sly grin.
A good number of Central Arkansas Master Naturalists — with 56 members total, the result of two classes — have advanced science degrees, but there are also lawyers, stockbrokers, teachers and college students.
George Lauster, the chapter president, has a doctorate in ecology. When he moved to Arkansas from Wisconsin, crediting his Master Naturalist training with providing a crash course in the landscape of his adopted home state, Lauster figured the upstart organization could hold its trainings on 12 consecutive Saturdays throughout the fall.
He thought the season’s vibrant colors and cooler temperatures would suit the field trips that session leaders often encourage for instruction in the wild. Master Naturalist curriculum instructors include lecturers from the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, the Arkansas Geologic Commission, the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality and others.
Wrong: “I was told the fall wasn’t good, because there are too many football games,” Lauster explained.
So Master Naturalists aren’t naturally pigskin-averse ?
“Oh, no,” Lauster said. “Some people are very avid about it. We have a very diverse group.”
So if Master Naturalists aren’t tree-hugging, Razorbacks-repulsed immodests, what are they ?
In waterways like the Little Maumelle River, they function like U. S. marshals on the trail of a fugitive. To maintain her certification, Bowie must complete 40 hours of volunteer work per year, but she logged 95 hours this summer. Many of those hours accumulated through her work on the Little Maumelle’s “Stream Team,” Master-Naturalist-speak for volunteers who wade in and take a bug census.
Since some insects flee from polluted streams and some thrive in them, Master Naturalists like Bowie cart around binders with a literal “Most Wanted” list of bugs.
In the front of the binder, in the category of “Most Wanted,” are insects whose presence means a stream is at optimum hydro-health: the minnow mayfly, the saddle casemaker or the Michelin-Man caddis fly, a bug so named for its segmented body. Next are the “Moderately Wanted,” like dragonflies. In the “Least Wanted” category — owing to their pigs-in-mud glee over pollution — are leeches, snails and scuds.
Owen pursed her lips as she tossed aside a sunbleached Pepsi can and a small plastic cup of what had once held a single serving of applesauce. Later, alongside the stream she recovered a Budweiser can, crushed into an accordion squeeze, and a heavily degraded Duracell. (Despite occasional splashes of what he terms “nontoxic trash,” Lauster said the Little Maumelle is in “pristine condition.” )
Along a park’s trails, the naturalists are right-hand men and women to park interpreters like James Mullins, who stood in his fawn-colored ranger’s uniform supervising a quartet of Master Naturalists as they hacked and raked away at a new base trail along the Pinnacle Mountain perimeter. (This Saturday, Master Naturalists will themselves be the supervisors, as they direct volunteers at Pinnacle Mountain State Park who want to participate in a Keep Arkansas Beautiful cleanup day. The park has more information at 501-367-0405. )
Mullins trusted the group’s trail-building work because of the rigorous Master Naturalist training each volunteer had undergone. He knew once they had cleared a curving path, more workers would come along behind them and install small raised rock ledges horizontally across the trail to direct water runoff.
“Beginners do a straight line, with rocks lining each side,” he said. “That’ll make a gully quicker than anything.”
Master Naturalists also spend a lot of time using brush, logs and leaves to obscure what rangers like Mullins refer to as “bootleg trails,” unplanned, unsanctioned paths that have emerged in the mountainside due to the repeated shortcuts of hikers who leave the designated trails.
“You can do a lot of damage one footprint at a time,” he said.
Without projects like trail work at Burns Park and Pinnacle Mountain, membership in the Master Naturalist program would be abstract. Bill Toland, a retiree and Master Naturalist who is spending his weekday mornings lately on trail construction at Burns Park, describes the organization as attracting wildlife enthusiasts who want to practice what they preach.
“We’re outdoor types anyway,” said Toland, who ventured that most of his physical-fitness activity is derived from trail work. “People of all skill levels can do this,” he said.
Master Naturalists function somewhat like a hospital auxiliary, volunteering to complete tasks that an institution’s staff might not have the time or budget to accomplish. The group allows members to get creative with how they arrive at their 40-volunteer-hour quota.
Philip Jones, a Naturalist and a librarian with the Central Arkansas Library System’s main branch in downtown Little Rock, logged the bulk of his time by using his lunch hour to stroll the bank of the Arkansas River near the library and keep a journal of the wildlife activity that he spotted. When the facility opens next year, the Witt Stephens Jr. Central Arkansas Nature Center will use his data in creating a context for the city’s urban animal life.
Meanwhile, Bowie augments her stream work by volunteering at home, gluing dried and pressed flora and fauna to archival paper as part of an exhaustive plant-cataloging effort being undertaken by the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission. She hopes her studies through the Master Naturalist program will provide an extracurricular bedrock of knowledge two years from now, when she retires as a teacher’s aide from the Pulaski County Special School District and can begin her long-dreamtof goal of enrolling in college, focusing on science courses.
When Master Naturalists propose their own volunteer projects, “the only real conflict we have,” Lauster said, “is whether it’s naturalist work, or gardening.”
A conflict that the volunteers don’t sense is the pull from work to play. When asked if Master Naturalists ever put down their binoculars, rakes and nets to have a little fun, Toland paused from his trail-making with an incredulous look. “This is fun !” he said. Enrollment for the third class of aspiring Central Arkansas Master Naturalists will open in October, with Saturday classes beginning in January. Details are at www. armasternaturalist. org.