Educating Future Environmental Stewards

A key aspect of our mission at the Sugar Pine Foundation entails "educating and involving local volunteers of all ages in hands-on forest stewardship." We take the "education" piece of our mission seriously because the younger generations will soon be the stewards of our forests, land, water, air and planet. We partner with schools and organizations all around Lake Tahoe to offer enriching outdoor environmental programming to our local youth.

The South Tahoe Environmental Education Coalition (STEEC) and North Tahoe Environmental Education Coalition (NTEEC) are two of our main partners. These groups are comprised of non-profits, government agencies and school district liaisons who work together to create high quality outdoor field trips to educate local students about the natural world.

We take the lead on lessons about trees, photosynthesis, dendrochronology, and forest health. Most of our lessons include planting baby sugar pines and other native tree seedlings. Planting is always the biggest hit with students!

Other organizations teach about watershed health, wildlife, history and ways of the Washoe, fire ecology, soils, and more. Students get to spend most of the day outdoors as they rotate between stations on different environmental topics. STEEC and NTEEC field trips are designed for a whole grade level at a time, which means we reach over 200 students per field trip!

Students learn how to use an increment borer to study tree age, health and history without harming the tree!

The SPF also works with individual teachers in different schools around the lake to offer planting field trips that align with the teachers' curriculum. We teach the students about the threat of white pine blister rust, logging in the Comstock Era and fire suppression. We want students to know about the history and ecology of our local forests in addition to proper planting technique.

We reach over 600 students through our  student plantings and educational programming each year. Though these events are not open to the public, they are a huge portion of our work. In fact, educating our youth keeps us busier than running our community plantings!