LNT Masters Training Class --- Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge

The Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife refuge is located in Southern Arizona, and contains a 56 mile border with Mexico. The refuge brochure describes the area to be as big as Rhode Island without any people and only one dirt road. Located in the Sonoran desert, it is home to endangered desert bighorn sheep and sonoran pronghorn. We did not see either of these two creatures, but did see creosote bushes, palo verde trees, majestic saguaro cacti, prickly cholla cacti and the weird and wonderful ocotillo cacti in bloom. We also saw roadrunner tracks and heard coyote howls at the full moon.

The Class

After an initial prep talk (which included a fun and informative presentation from our own Harley Dubois on the LNT principal Plan Ahead and Prepare), we met our classmates and took off in vehicles for the trail head (50 miles of dirt road from the pavement). Our LNT classmates ranged from federal land managers and college professors to camp wilderness and girl scout trainers. We were the first LNT class to be sponsored by the Fish and Wildlife Service and our class included the youngest master (16) to ever be trained.

Daily Activities

Our NOLS instructors split us into small cook groups early, which included splitting the 4 of us (Karina, Harley, Shona and Larry) into each group since they thought that we would be interesting (for everyone else) and they wanted to spread our fun around. Throughout the week, we camped at four different sites, learning to carefully pick campsites so that the sites would be easy to naturalize. Our time during the day was mostly split between hiking to amazing sites and participating in each studentís LNT presentation. It was a great opportunity to learn lots of fun teaching techniques to help us spread the LNT word.

Restoration

During one stop along the trail the class worked to restore a site near the road that had been used by the border patrol as a turn around. As you can see in the photos, the ground had been torn up by the patrol vehicles that were driving over the site. The class started by smoothing out the vehicle tracks. After that, we past on knowledge gained from restoring sites in the Black Rock NCA, the transplanting of dead plants. While it s not that easy to move live plants, dead ones transplant quite easily and still work to break up large paths opened up by motor vehicles. As you can see in the picture, the site does notlook like a good place for a vehicle to turn around in now

Quotes from our Master's Training

- Did we just step into a Dr. Seuss book?
- Can I see those cool night vision goggles again?
- Who would have thought that discussion of the principal leave what you find - would have left me with such a profound sense of place, and all that a place is made up of
- Woo hoo, it's raining!
- errr. Arrrgg. I'm criptoe, don't step on meee
- Who's up for a full moon hike?
- Date shakes, here we come!

Plans for the Future

We also had time to spend with our NOLS leaders discussing some of the nitty gritty details of setting up a great LNT train the trainers course. As LNT masters, most of our classmates are hoping to go on to train other LNT trainers. However, of the entire group, the BM folks have the clearest path on where to apply our newfound skills. Weíre already planning our first LNT train the trainers course for the weekend of May 25 and 26 (less than 2 months away!). We will also be developing new and interesting ways to teach and inspire the entire Black Rock city community to Leave No Trace. Since we also managed to interest some pretty cool folks to come to Burning Man this year, weíll have some new volunteers to help us make these two efforts successful!