Petaluma’s third graders dug into the ground above the creek with damp soil patties McNear Elementary School They might have been mud-pies, but the kids had enough fun shaping them.
They were also learning as they smoothed the dirt over the flattened seed balls. Their hope was that baby blue eyes would soon germinate there and flower, atop of an embankment.
Participants in a Petaluma-based program that has been running for many years Point Blue Conservation Science Students and Teachers Restoring a Watershed, or STRAW The youngsters were learning about environmental stewardship and helped to improve habitat along the creek.
The flowers should attract bees to spread them among other native plants that were planted by McNear grade students years earlier. This was done to provide more shade and to stabilize Thompson Creek’s creek bed for better health.
It’s the kind of experience that might have piqued STRAW Education Manager’s interest. Alba Estrada LpezIf it had been available to her.
Estrada Lpez, 26, a daughter of immigrant fieldworkers, was raised in the Salinas Valley. She was not familiar with landscape management and environmental restoration concepts. Estrada Lpez now teaches and shows around the Greater Bay Area.
She was born in Mexico and moved to Greenfield as an infant. She grew-up in many natural settings. Her family was committed to sustainable living, including a garden, minimal consumption, and reusing and recycling everything they had. Estrada Lpez stated that it was a cultural and family tradition, and not because of wider views on resource conservation.
Focus on science, but keep your eyes on it
Even though she was a recent arrival at the University of California Los Angeles, she had never been exposed to environmentalism, or any person who had dedicated their lives to it.
She said that she didn’t know any conservationists and didn’t think of it as a field.
In a 2014 landmark report, the environmental movement was described as an overwhelmingly white Green Insiders Club. Despite clear evidence that communities of colour sufferdisproportionately from the effects of environmental hazards, it has long lacked racial diversity.
Estrada Lpez works to change that from the inside.
She stated that I knew from the beginning that science was my passion, and that I enjoyed learning about the mysteries of life.
However, a passion for science meant a future as a physician. In her mind, likewise, pursuing linguistics led to a career in law. It wasn’t until her senior year, when she took a restoration ecology course, that she learned about conservation sciences.
It was a stimulating and pivotal introduction to the subject. Estrada Lpez was able to make a series key intellectual connections while enrolled in the class. Estrada Lpez was able to conduct field restoration work in wealthy neighborhoods in L.A., for example, rather than in less-affluent areas where the need was greater but the same access to help was not available.
Inadequacy of diversity in leadership positions
Although she majored in biology, she had been minoring Mexican Studies and Spanish and was reading Latino authors who complained about limited land access. She explained that she started to see the dissonance in science and society.
Unknowingly, she also served as a mentor to inner-city grade-school students during most of her four years of college. This unknowingly helped her prepare for the work that she does now.
It was something that I enjoyed greatly, she said now. Sharing science!
Estrada Lpez was close to graduating in 2018, but she had plans to dedicate a year to studying for the entrance exam into medical school.
She was also aware of the Roger Arliner Young, also known as RAY. Diversity FellowshipsA program that was started in 2016 as a response to the 2014 Green 2.0 report, which revealed such a poor representation of minority groups within environmental institutions.
The authors surveyed 191 conservation organizations, 74 government agencies and 28 grant-making institutions. It was found that gender equality had made progress, but not in the highest ranking positions.
The report found that there was an increase in ethnic minority hiring, but Black, Indigenous, and other peoples of color occupied less than 12% of leadership positions and never exceeded 16% overall staffing or board membership.
