Mendocino College Agricultural students have been gaining hands-on ecological restoration skills at the College’s new emergency access road in Ukiah. The mile-long access road, completed last year in collaboration with Granite Construction and the Mendocino College Foundation, was a resiliency project to provide secondary egress in and out of campus in case of emergency. As a condition of federal and state construction permits, the College is required to plant and maintain over 30,000 native grasses, shrubs and trees. These plantings will help both re-establish and increase wetland areas and habitat that were disturbed by construction activities.
Mendocino College Agricultural Studies professor Kurt Voigt and Director of Facilities Planning, Operations & Sustainability, MacAdam Lojowsky, saw an opportunity for collaboration. Students have helped dig holes, plant the grasses and shrubs, and learn about restoring habitats that have been affected by construction activities.
“I saw 30,000 plants that needed to get irrigated and put in the ground before April and knew we needed help,” said Lojowsky. “I asked Kurt if he thought his students would be interested in being a part of it. His immediate answer was ‘absolutely!'”
With the remediation consulting by Ukiah-based North Coast Regional Management, Mendocino College maintenance and grounds staff laid thousands of feet of irrigation to ensure that these plants establish and survive. Agriculture students had the opportunity to learn about large-scale irrigation design and different strategies to water this vast number of plants. In addition to specific planting specifications, many of the shrubs and trees also need protective cages to assist in their establishment. All of these aspects were incorporated in this living lab lesson. Working under the directives of actual permits provides students with valuable lessons, explains Professor Voigt, “It’s great real-world experience on a professional jobsite to be able to work with other students on a common goal. And, it’s doing something good for the school. It’s hard work- being out there, digging holes, but the students had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun today.”
Once all 31,905 grasses, shrubs and trees are in the ground, Mendocino College will need to prepare and submit annual reports each year for the next five years with an identified survival threshold of 80% of the plants. Both Voigt and Lojowsky see opportunities for future collaboration on this project.
Voigt says, “At the end of the day today, the students were asking when we’d be going back out to do more.”
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