Evergreen Middle School Green Team, in cooperation with a multitude of community partners, are developing and executing an extensive composting program at their school and beyond. To address the impacts of climate change and the increase frequency and intensity of natural hazards they are striving for zero food waste at their school.The less food waste that enters the landfill means fewer greenhouse gasses generated from that waste.

This student from Rocky Mountain High School has been working in partnership with forestry professionals to promote the health of Colorado’s endemic solitary bee species. A key to revegetation after wildfire, solitary bees work to pollinate and facilitate native plant growth in burn areas. By creating ‘bee hotels’ and distributing them across Colorado, this student has been working to promote the health, habitat, and population of solitary bees.

The St. Vrain Innovation Center has been working on the Northern Leopard Frog reintroduction project for the past two years. In order to recover from the habitat loss from human impact and flooding, these students have developed an in-depth process to help track population dynamics using AI and bioacoustics. Their work has to potential to help better understand their efforts to improve the population of such an important indicator species in CO.

Students from Dayspring Christian Academy started out by seeking approval to stabilize and revegetate the banks of the Poudre River in Greeley, but their request was denied. So they pivoted and focused on their school campus and applied the same principle to stabilize and revegetate the hill behind their school to prevent erosion and impacts from flooding.

Collegiate Academy students have been working in cooperation with Denver Audubon for years addessing natural hazards impacts. This group was addressing the build up of decomposing cattails along the ponds. The cattails were preventing the ponds from supporting a biodiverse population of flora and fauna. By removing the cattails and planting endemic species, the students’ plan is not only improving the landscape’s capacity to mitigate the impact of natual hazards like flooding and drought, but also decreasing the amount of greenhouse gas being emitted from the decomposing cattails.

The St. Vrain Innovation Center has been working on the Northern Leopard Frog reintroduction project for the past two years. In order to safe guard Northern Leopard frogs from spreading disease, this group of students has developed a protocol to identify pathogens that negatively affect tadpoles and frog in their reintroduction process. Natural hazards like floods can also spread these pathogens, like citrid fungus, throughout a riparian system. This protocol could also be applied to identify these pathogens after major flooding events.

Plastic pollution is a major issue in a variety of ways. This student group identified that plastic waste was severely impacting their community’s stormwater system contributing to increased flooding. Not only are they coordinating clean up efforts in the Fort Collins area, they are hosting educational programs at elementary schools to bring awareness to this unique impact of plastic waste.

Gunnison is a diverse community and students from the high school wanted to increase awareness of the importance of being prepared for and mitigating the impacts of wildfire. This team divided into smaller committees to gather and share information at a Community Wildfire Expo about defensible space, evacuation, resources and tools to help in the event of wildfire. This group focused on ensuring that all community members would have access to this information by providing Spanish and Cora translations. They also created fun and unique presentations to capture the younger folks and share the importance of being prepared for wildfires.

The St. Vrain Innovation Center has been working on the Northern Leopard Frog reintroduction project for the past two years. This group of students has been working to improve the water quality and biomedia filtration system that they use to grow Northern Leopard Frog eggs. The more efficient the system, the easier it will be to care for the eggs and tadpoles they receive each year. This will result in this endangered species’ regrowth.