Along the Pacific Flyway
This February, ECO’s Aves Compartidas Program Manager, Carina Zehr, traveled to Guanajuato to visit our international partners and participating schools.
Over two weeks, Carina visited eight elementary schools, sharing photos, videos, and stories about Oregon—and about migratory birds, like Wilson’s warbler and the Western tanager, that connect students in both regions along the Pacific Flyway.
A Wetland Becomes a Classroom
On the grounds of Clackamas High School is a wetland connected to the larger Clackamas River watershed. For students in Rod Schroufe’s environmental science classes, it has become a living classroom.
From Our Roots to Our Reach
ECO began with one classroom, a patch of overgrown schoolyard, and a goat. In the early 2000s, Sarah Woods and Bethany Thomas were teaching short science lessons in Portland-area schools, but the impact was fleeting. They dreamed of something bigger: year-round, hands-on learning that would let students connect with the nature right outside their schools. That idea became ECO, and over the next twenty years, it grew from a single classroom experiment, a schoolyard full of invasive plants, and a goat into an enduring program that inspires curiosity, stewardship, and connection to the natural world.