Mount Madonna students win President’s Environmental Youth Award for snowy plover project

WATSONVILLE >> Seventeen students at Mount Madonna School who spent a year working on a project to protect the Western snowy plover are among 15 national winners of the 2016 President's Environmental Youth Award.

A representative from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will honor the students, now sixth-graders, in a ceremony at the private school at 1 p.m. Tuesday, and the students are invited to Washington, in August for a recognition.

The Mount Madonna students were concerned by the declining numbers of the snowy plover, a shorebird the size of a sparrow, which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lists as threatened.

Out of this concern came "Shore Wars," their campaign to educate the public about threats to snowy plovers such as plastic pollution and sand mining that erodes beaches where the shorebirds skitter back and forth.

The students collected trash on the beach by the Pajaro River, looking for tiny pieces of plastic that are hazardous when ingested by snowy plovers.

The students worked with California State Parks to create signs to protect flocks wintering at Seabright State Beach and worked with the Last Plastic Straw to encourage restaurants to stop serving beverages with plastic straws.

They replanted habitat at Moss Landing State Beach and created nesting sites in salt flats at the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve.

Their educational video, "Shore Wars," was shown at Monterey Bay Aquarium's 2016 World Ocean Day and its Plastic Pollution Summit.

Teacher Jessica Cambell, who mentored the fifth-graders along with teacher Nathan Rockhold, said the students were so passionate about what they wanted to accomplish that they spent time during recess, after school and on weekends.

The news of the honor caught the attention of Rep. Jimmy Panetta on Friday. "I commend these students from Mount Madonna for their hard work and for proving that you are never too young to be a steward of our environment," Panetta said in a statement.

The president's award is presented to students in grades kindergarten through 12th-grade who exemplify initiative, creativity and problem-solving skills to find sustainable solutions to environmental problems.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said the award winners "demonstrate the impact that a few individuals can make to protect our environment."

Kudos are going to Anna Shelton, Cecily Kelly, Colette Chankai, Eve Willis, Iris Hobbs, Isabella Cambell, Jake Beske, Mariah Cohen, Nicole Brandt, Ronan Keith, Sadie Willoughby, Sam Kaplan, Sandy Astone, Taylor Shaw, Vivienne Chankai, Wade Holmquist and Zoey Ocampo-Sobkoviak, who worked on the project as fifth-graders.

For a list of winners visit: epa.gov/education.