On Monday, October 20th, the IB Environmental Systems and Societies and IB Sports, Exercise, and Health Science classes went on an annual field trip to Santa Cruz Island in the Channel Islands National Park off the coast of Ventura. In tandem with the class curriculum, Ms. Prater and Ms. Higa took a group of students to explore and witness what’s often called “The Galapagos of North America.”
At around 8 A.M., the bus left the AHS campus. In order to get to the island, the students must first travel to a port in Ventura, on Point Hueneme. Then, the students took a boat from the harbor into the island.
Once on the island, students ate lunch. In order to maintain the environment of the national park, all the trash that students bring with them must also leave with them. As an island national park, the ecosystem is uniquely isolated and must be maintained as such in order to preserve the animal and plant life found on the island.
The groups then split off into two separate hikes, one faster and the other slower, but both around five miles long. Along the hike, naturalist guides from the group Island Packers shared interesting ecology information, explained their own connection to the island, and worked to educate on the natural world and humans’ place within it. The final destination was Potato Harbor, a beautiful view point on the island and Pacific Ocean.
The guides, although not park rangers, have in-depth knowledge on the island and ecology. One such guide works for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in addition to educational jobs at a variety of national parks and museums of natural history.
Santa Cruz island serves as the location for the Agoura HS field trip due to their interesting ecological study of island foxes. The fox, endemic to the islands, recently underwent a near extinction event after an ecological breakdown in the natural system. However, work by ecologists and scientists have brought the species back to the island in large numbers, making them a unique and rare species to be recovered from near extinction by human effort.
The annual field trip served the same purpose this year as it does nearly every year: connect students to the natural world and function to educate them on the importance of conservation in a complicated time for the scientific community. And, assuredly, get their steps in.
