Catawba College’s Environmental Stewards are gearing up for a successfully sustainable semester by creating and working on several projects for the betterment of the school ecologically. These projects are created from the minds of the students in Environmental Stewards and almost entirely directed and put together by the students. Some of the projects that the Stewards have planned for the upcoming years are as follows:
The Stewards hope to create a butterfly garden sometime this semester. It will first be put in the green house by the Shuford Science Building and possibly later moved to a more permanent place on campus.
Also in the preserve, the students hope to create a Honey Bee keeping area to bring more bees to the preserve for pollination and also to possibly collect honey.
The Stewards will additionally be assisting Catawba Outreach Biology on campus to get people interested in sustainability and the environment. They hope to teach programs at local schools and possibly even attend some of Downtown Salisbury’s Friday Night Outs every first Friday of the month.
Another project in the works for the preserve, that is currently only in the idea stage, is the creation of an outdoor classroom. This classroom would provide alternative seating for classes learning about nature and seating for anyone who wants to relax or do homework out in the preserve.
On campus, the stewards are creating recycling signs to go above the various recycling bins around campus to show students what can and cannot be recycled. The group is also looking into reinstating the plastic recycling bags that used to be in every dorm room.
The final project in the works is a species inventory of the entire preserve. The group is creating a website, and hopefully an application, to list and describe all of the animals and plants that currently exist in the preserve. Some will even have exact GPS coordinates to a certain species. The website will also list whether a species is endangered or not. The group plans to have all of the vascular plants in the preserve listed on the website by earth week of this year.
