Sadie Groene is interested in ecology and biology and has always been concerned with the environmental issues facing us as a planet. She’s a senior at Grand County High School and has been constantly active with school programs through her years there. Sadie is part of the Science Olympiad, student government, and multiple sports teams–including soccer and wrestling–and is a Sterling Scholar.
As the science Sterling Scholar, she was looking for an internship that would add to her portfolio, allow her to use her ecology knowledge, and connect to her love of protecting the outdoors. So she looked towards Rim to Rim Restoration.
GCHS sends a new group of students into the community every quarter through its work-based learning program. These students become radiologists, teachers, journalists and so much more for seven weeks. Through this program, these interns begin to get an idea of what they might want to do after school and learn boundless information about their field. As an intern for the Sun News this quarter, I will be following a new student every week to get a sense of their experience.
Rim to Rim is a nonprofit that oversees restoration projects, working to remove invasive species of plants and reseed the areas with native plants. What Sadie’s doing right now is sorting and identifying those seeds.
“They just have like drawers and drawers full of random packets of seeds. Some of them are super-official with like, here’s the lot number, and here’s the date that it was collected, and all that information,” Sadie said. “And some of them have just been sent in. So it’s like a Ziploc bag with something like, ‘cactus?’ written on it.”
Sadie’s goal is to identify and organize as many of these seeds as possible and enter that information into the Rim to Rim database. The hope is that by this winter, once Sadie is working in the nursery, Rim to Rim will then be able to know precisely what seeds it already has and what needs to be bought.
One of Rim to Rim’s biggest projects right now is removing invasive tamarisks from riparian areas and replacing them with native cottonwood trees. Sadie said these cottonwoods are one of the first steps to restoring wildlife as the trees help rebuild the creek beds and prevent them from getting eroded.
One of the big reasons Sadie chose Rim to Rim was because its work has a measurable impact, she said, and she’ll be able to see all the things she’s accomplished. The nonprofit’s mission also closely aligns with her values of outdoor restoration—Sadie is an avid skier and backpacker.
Sadie is interested in studying either biology and ecology or biochemistry next year in college, which she said was the exact study path her coworker Gavin pursued. She said she was able to talk with him about the difference in each major and where they led him and she thinks she will do something similar.
“I definitely think I would consider doing this because everyone that I work with seems to really enjoy it and have a really fun time with it,” Sadie said.
Right now, Sadie is looking forward to working in the Rim to Rim nursery this winter.
“Even if I’m not in the field, I’m in the dirt,” she said.
