Alex- Zion- Day Four

We began our Thursday with a short drive to Zion's nursery. When we arrived, we met Becca, Carrie, and a few other volunteers. We spent the day under the sun in an open field putting up a fence. The nursery's field is a project for growing native plants, and then harvesting the seeds. The seeds can then be used to restore areas that are in need of restoration. Becca explained that the project began after a fire destroyed ten-thousand acres of the park's property. At first, a very small amount of seeds were harvested from the wild and then sent away to a company to be grown and harvested again. This was a costly process, so the park set up its own version of what the company was doing. It has been successful thus far, but the employees want to begin growing a new native plant. Deer like to eat this new plant, so we helped build the fence to keep them out. It was a very physical job, but there were a lot of people helping, including Quin and Tal from the day before. There were also volunteers from the American Conservation Experience (ACE) there, and they were also sharing our campsite. I have gotten to learn so much about ACE from being around the volunteers as well as talking to the rangers. It seems like a great organization, and it also has a branch of Americorps volunteers.

After our work, we were able to take a drive to the east side of the park. It was a completely different look from what we had seen every day on the west side, and we also encountered big horn sheep including their newly born offspring! On the west side, we had only seen deer.