Southern Urban and Interface Forests - What's New

Years ago, John Warner, an urban district forester with the Texas A&M Forest Service and a longtime InterfaceSouth partner, recognized that landownership patterns in the southeastern part of the state around Houston were changing rapidly. Latino, Chinese, and Vietnamese families from Houston were moving to the interface and buying 5–20 acre tracts of forestland within his rapidly growing multi-county district. He realized that the agency was going to have to change its communication approach to reach many of these new forest landowners. “As an agency, we know how to communicate with traditional landowners,” says Warner. “However, outreach to different ethnic groups is something new for us.”

In 2007, an opportunity to reach these new landowners presented itself when Warner met Tamberly Conway, a graduate student in the College of Forestry and Agriculture at Stephen F. Austin State University. Conway was working with Latino Legacy, a program established by the university and funded by the USDA Forest Service’s [USFS] More Kids in the Woods program to connect Latino communities with the public lands and forestlands in the Houston area through bilingual conservation education programming. (Conway has since been hired by the USFS as a conservation education specialist working remotely in Texas for the USFS’s office in Washington, D.C.)

InterfaceSouth and local partners, including the University of Florida’s School of Forest Resources and Conservation, the Gainesville Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Affairs, and Alachua County Environmental Protection, received funding from this year’s Forest Service More Kids in the Woods (MKIW) cost share funding opportunity to engage middle school students in outdoor science learning activities in Gainesville’s Hogtown Creek Watershed. The MKIW program supports activities and programs designed to spark curiosity about nature and promote learning through applications of science, technology, engineering and mathematics principles.

Project partners will collaborate with Westwood science teachers to conduct outdoor science learning activities and service learning projects within the nearby watershed. Partners will also organize a school camp out and participate in career day events and science fairs. Science middle school teachers will be provided professional development opportunities through a train-the-teacher workshop. Project successes, materials and information will be shared locally, regionally and nationally through our combined partner networks.

To learn more about the Forest Service’s More Kids in the Woods program and 2013 cost share funding recipients visit:

www.fs.usda.gov/main/conservationeducation/about/education-themes/kids-in-woods

www.fs.fed.us/news/2013/releases/05/more-kids-outdoors.shtml