Sacramento County Office of Education (SCOE) high school construction students are collaborating with the Cosumnes River Preserve in Galt to provide more nesting places for birds. Students from Elinor Lincoln Hickey Jr./Sr. High School traveled to the preserve today to deliver nearly three dozen nesting boxes they built as part of an ongoing community service project.
“It makes me feel like I’m helping the community, really doing something and making a difference,” said Hickey student Jose Villanueva. Students also helped install several boxes as part of a community service learning project and participated in a discussion with conservation experts about wildlife in the preserve.
“They’re learning about what it means to be a good member of the community, a contributing member of the community, and they’ll take that with them always,” said David W. Gordon, Sacramento County Superintendent of Schools.
Nesting boxes are man-made enclosures used by birds as additional places to nest and raise their young. The boxes built by the Hickey students are replacements for older ones within the Cosumnes River Preserve that had deteriorated. For the past several months, SCOE students enrolled in the construction training program at Hickey have been building nesting boxes.
The project is the first step in a new, collaborative effort between SCOE and the Cosumnes River Preserve to give students hands-on outdoor education lessons while providing a supply of bird habitats. “It builds a lot of camaraderie, not just on this project but on anything they’re going to work on in the future,” said Construction Instructor Mike Anckner from Northern California Construction Training (NCCT). “They have to be able to rely on each other, and there’s trust involved.”
The Cosumnes River Preserve includes more than 50,000 acres of wildlife habitat and agricultural lands that provide numerous social, economic, and recreational benefits to local communities and to people residing in the greater Sacramento and San Joaquin areas.