Along the banks of the Clark Fork River, birds aren’t the only creatures chattering. A group of Missoula fifth graders are hunched over card tables with white buckets on top full of water, river scum — and creepy crawlies.
The students are identifying all kinds of “macro-invertebrates” — aka, bugs — that live in the river. The data is one clue scientists use to determine the health of a watershed, along with other indicators like appearance and chemical makeup.
It’s complicated work environmental education nonprofit Ripple has been teaching to middle schoolers for more than a decade.
At one of the tables, student Lochlan Morris helps scoop the bugs into ice cube trays for study.
“I thought they were kind of cool, because some of them were kind of creepy, and we had a really big one,” Morris says.
He says if they’d only found species like leeches in the water, it could indicate the river is unhealthy.
“But, since we found a bunch of mayflies and stoneflies — they’re not pollution-tolerant, so they would go away if there was pollution — so since we found a lot of those, we know that it’s probably not polluted,” he says.
That stretch of river looked very different a few decades ago. It’s where the Milltown Dam once sat, collecting tons of toxic mining waste washed downstream over a century.
Ripple program manager Dalit Guscio says it's a crucial opportunity for students to learn what it took to improve the river’s health.
“Science changes, our knowledge changes, but we need to understand how it works and we need to understand what it provides us,” Guscio says.
Ripple works with classes all along the Clark Fork, from Butte to Missoula, each spring.
