Healthy water, healthy geese

Thursday, June 24, 2004
Julie Godberson (left), a biologist with the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, and Morgan Strand of Imperial carry a "kick seine" out of a Barnett Park pond. After kicking sediment onto the underwater seine and draining it, Morgan found "just worms and snails," an indication, Godberson said, of the lack of diversity and health in the pond water. (Connie Jo Discoe/McCook Daily Gazette)

When summer camp is over in Barnett Park, young campers will devise a management plan to maintain a healthy water system and a healthy goose population at the same time.

Marla Smith of Imperial, coordinator of the Barnett Park summer camp, said the plan will be designed to manage the park's overpopulation of geese.

"People will be able to enjoy the geese," Smith said, "without the water quality concerns."

The campers -- fourth graders through eighth graders from six schools -- studied Canada geese with Mark and Ellen Brogie of Creighton; predators of geese with T.J. Walker of the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission; macro-invertibrates with Julie Godberson of Game and Parks; water chemistry with the Mobile Environment Lab from the University of Nebraska Kearney; and solving environmental problems with Randy Vlasin of Imperial.

Smith said the renovation, dredging and landscaping project ongoing at Barnett Park is funded with a grant from the Environmental Trust. The camp -- the education component of that renovation project -- is funded with a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency, in cooperation with the City of McCook, Educational Service Unit No 15 and NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service).

The Barnett Park project is a spinoff, Smith said, of the Light Dam Renovation Project at Imperial and the Republican River Restoration Project at Orleans.

"There is such an educational opportunity here," Smith said, "to actually do research and collect data." She added, "It's nice to have an education component to these projects."

After the Barnett Park camp ends, teachers will meet in July to work on science assessments and create ways to apply the research and data to classroom activities.

Smith said that, in the fall, each of the eight teams involved in the Barnett Park camp will receive a kit that will include equipment, software and materials designed for use in the classroom.

Students at the camp represented Imperial, Oshkosh, Brady, Wauneta-Palisade, McCook and Southwest (Republican Valley).

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