Written by Carly Frazee.
Growing up in small town Nebraska, my exposure to nonprofits and environmental stewardship was very low. Most people moved on to work in the medical field, conventional agriculture or ranching, education, or business. I graduated college with a degree in Elementary Education and quickly realized that being an elementary school teacher was not the right career fit for me, and then I began to look for opportunities that were outside my purview. My first introduction to nonprofits and environmental stewardship was a food sovereignty internship. To my surprise, the experiences I had during this internship lit a passion that became the guiding force in whichever direction I moved. Since then caring for the land has been at the front and center of my desires.
I decided to pivot my focus to land restoration after spending time working with the intersection between farming and land. I spent many hours searching for a non-profit with an internship that would benefit me in this pivot and one that is intentional and aware of their impact in the world. That’s when I found SPAWN, a branch of TIRN. TIRN talks the talk AND walks the walk. This is obvious in how consistent their initiatives and impact is to their mission.
Across the website you can feel the passion this organization has for the ocean, endangered marine wildlife, ecosystem regeneration, conservation of other endangered species, and the human role in saving the planet. There is a complete recognition that it’s all interconnected- the animals, the environment, us as humans. We can’t save the environment or wildlife without teaching humans how their behavior and actions impact ecological systems and all life on earth, including human life. TIRN very obviously understands this holistic approach.
With this understanding of TIRN, it was an easy decision to apply to SPAWN, whose page also demonstrates the same, all-encompassing approach to saving the coho. I knew at SPAWN I would be working with people who were passionate about creating and sustaining healthy ecological systems. I had no doubt in my mind I would be supported in my own journey to conservation/restoration. And to say I’ve been supported in my journey would be an understatement.
Photo of Carly preparing soil for nursery volunteers.
My time as a habitat restoration intern with SPAWN started mid-November and it feels like I’ve participated in more activities and met more people than what one person could imagine in 3 months. Within my first week I participated in Friday Nursery Day, a local safari at Pt. Reyes with wild animal rights advocate and author Jeff Miller, and participated in a juvenile salmon release with NPS. That first week set the pace for all the different opportunities I’ve had since then. Some of this includes (but is not limited too, nor includes the personal support given by this team):
- Spawner surveys (walking the tributaries SPAWN monitors for coho salmon and their redds)
- Creek walk tours (viewing migrating adult coho while educating groups of people about the coho salmon, their habitat, and why it’s important to care for riparian ecosystems)
- Tours of project sites for school groups
- Restoration events with community members
- Being involved in other local environmental justice advocacy
- Stabilization of an eroding bank
- Plant propagation with local Marin County schools and in the SPAWN Nursery
- Attend project update meetings
Carly spots a coho salmon in San Geronimo creek.
Working hard on bank stabilization project.
It’s hard to identify one specific opportunity or experience as my favorite. But one experience I really enjoyed for its holistic approach was the bank repair. For this repair, it included many moving parts- the land owner, the machine operator, the geomorphologist, Mother Nature, wild animals and of course, us, the SPAWN team. We used several repair techniques to stabilize an eroding bank. While keeping our land impacts and stream health front and center, we laid erosion fabric, constructed a willow mattress, installed large woody debris, and collected seed and propagation in the local watershed to revegetate.
Working with so many moving pieces and with so much intentionality really makes one appreciate the ability we have as humans to be stewards of the land. We aren’t in control, we are here to tend and care for the environment and its inhabitants. This team, my position, allows me to experience that first hand. As I move forward, I hope to continually be in positions such as this that allow me and others to put the environment and the ecological impacts first. To build up all that has been destroyed for far too long.
