Environmental Science

“I didn’t remember that I remembered this much until I got here and then I was like, wait, I know I did this!” For current Environmental Science Educator Amelia Otto Cutting, leading student groups at NatureBridge Yosemite is a dream come true—as well as a bit of déjà vu. Although she’d been visiting Yosemite National Park with her family for her “whole life,” Amelia's first visit to NatureBridge came via Girl Scouts, which organized a summer camp that included five days at Yosemite Institute (now known as NatureBridge Yosemite) in 2009. Eleven-year-old Amelia explored the Spider Caves, climbed Lembert Dome, marveled at the Tuolumne Grove and hiked up to the Crane Flat fire lookout (“They even let us in the helicopter!” she recalls with excitement). Amelia’s favorite part of returning to Yosemite as an educator—after having experienced NatureBridge programming as a student—is “taking kids out into the field…and sharing my love of nature with them.”

Since opening in 2007, the Intertidal Lab at NatureBridge Golden Gate has been a student and staff favorite. The lab’s “touch tank” aquarium and the experiential learning it offers draw young people and adults alike to its waters for a hands-on exploration of Northern California marine life. It is a space unique to the Golden Gate campus, and it never fails to inspire questions and observations from visiting student groups. As a tool for developing young people’s scientific inquiry skills and passion for the marine environment, the Intertidal Lab is second to none. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic’s temporary closure of the lab represented a heartbreaking but necessary decision in 2020.

When your classroom is the great outdoors, teaching and learning can happen anywhere! That’s the attitude Drew Gallant brings to his work with NatureBridge as a multi-campus educator. Drew first joined NatureBridge as an educator at our Prince William Forest campus in Virginia in the spring of 2022. From there, his multi-campus adventures have taken him to two of our California sites, Dangermond Preserve and Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Although it’s located across the country from his childhood home of Maine, Drew now considers our Golden Gate campus to be “home.” This isn’t surprising, considering his favorite NatureBridge memory is that of sighting a pod of dolphins off Rodeo Beach with a group of Golden Gate students!

At NatureBridge, we celebrate the stewards of today and foster the development of the stewards of tomorrow, working to inspire environmental stewardship in all our participants. Our goal is to motivate our students to be changemakers in their communities and for our planet.

Each year, NatureBridge honors a student who has demonstrated leadership, growth and a commitment to protecting our natural world as a result of their participation in a NatureBridge program. This year’s honoree will be recognized and will speak at An Evening Outside with NatureBridge on Thursday, May 11 at our Golden Gate campus.

In the fall of 2022, I brought a group of 54 eighth graders to NatureBridge for the first time since the Covid pandemic shut down the school district in March of 2020.

NatureBridge was featured in an Op-Ed that was picked up by The Hill about the importance and impact of exposure to nature on mental health for young people. In the article, NatureBridge CEO Phil Kilbridge and associate professor in the Doerr School of Sustainability and a senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University Nicole Ardoin lay out the case for using outdoor education as a solution to things such as increased screen use, creating a relationship and sense of meaning with nature, effective social and emotional learning, and so much more.

We are so excited to welcome students back to NatureBridge campuses for the 2022-23 school year! Over the past few weeks, educators at every campus have been hard at work with training, orientations, preparation work and so much more.

Students are back on our Yosemite, Olympic and Golden Gate campuses! Hiking boots are hitting the trails, canoes are gliding into the water and our staff and students are having a blast out in our national park classrooms. Read on for a few highlights from our campuses.

As a science teacher, Paula Bush has long been an advocate for hands-on, out-of-the-classroom opportunities. For high school students, testing can be a huge obstacle. At NatureBridge, Paula was always thrilled that students were granted the opportunity to be curious without being tested. “We’ve killed curiosity in kids!” she said. “NatureBridge is important because it’s not about book knowledge: It’s experiential. You walk on a trail and all of a sudden learning is much more alive.” Most important was the continuity Paula found at NatureBridge: Tangible lessons that she could reinforce back in the students’ community about nature, being outdoors, caring for the earth and empowering leadership.