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Elizabeth, Austin and Sydney
(left to right) get started on the planting. |
This summer, Neosho NFH was graced with four YCC interns. Our 17 year old YCC leader, Elizabeth Wood, was a returning intern from the year before. The new YCC interns for the year were Austin Drake, Sydney Isley, and Christian Neff. Austin and Christian, both 16, attend Neosho High School. Sydney, also 16, goes to East Newton High School. These interns worked with the hatchery biologists for 8 weeks. A typical work week involved three of the YCC accompanying biologists with routine fish culture duties. The fourth intern remained inside the visitor center, keeping it clean and manning the receptionist desk. The YCC interns rotated who would stay inside all week.
This year, the four high school students were able to participate in a unique project involving the drainage area by the new Visitor Center. This drainage area is an old pond that has been modified to fit the new visitor center parking lot and serve as a wetland pond. The hatchery hopes to attract native birds and insects to this future wetland pond by putting native plants in and around the standing water.
Thanks to the expertise of native plant expert and nursery owner Mervin Wallace from the Missouri Wildflowers Nursery in Jefferson City, we were advised on how best to start on this long-term project. He also was instrumental in deciding which plants would work best in and around the drainage area. As of now, we have purchased 106 plants from his nursery. We will call on his expertise again this fall since he recommended most of the plantings be done during the cooler temperatures.
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| Christian begins removing cattails. |
Before anything could be planted, the dominant cattails had to be removed. The YCC crew made light work of this and were able to begin planting the same day. Over the course of a couple days, a total of 11 different plant species were dispersed in or around the pond. Submerged plant species included water canna, pickerel weed, water willow, lizard's tail, and water plantain. Along the water's edge and higher on the banks, we planted southern blue flag iris, copper iris, rose mallow, arrow arum, cup plant, and soft rush.
As with most outdoor duties, the project was made all the more challenging with the intensely high heat indices this summer. The crew worked hard, tried to maximize the cooler morning temperatures, and took frequent water breaks. Not only that, the pond area dried out after two weeks of the abnormally dry 100+ temperatures! We resorted to filling our fish cart with water and unloading it in the wetland pond five times a week. Although not all of the plants survived the severe heat, many of them have and are flowering. They are doing an excellent job attracting damselflies, dragonflies, bees, moths and butterflies. Being native to southwest Missouri, the plants have adapted well to the harsh conditions and we expect they will come back stronger next spring!
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| Butterflies feeding on the pickerel weed flowers. |
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| Dragonfly on burhead, a self-established native wetland plant. |
As for the YCC interns, their internship has ended and school has begun. Neosho NFH appreciates all the extra help that the YCC program has brought. We hope the lessons learned and knowledge gained here at the fish hatchery will carry them forward in their future careers.
