The Watershed Education Network

WEN's Citizen Science Stream Team performs water monitoring on Rattlesnake creek to provide critical water quality and fisheries data. Protecting and ensuring the health of our streams and watersheds is everyone's responsibility. It takes a collaborative network of dedicated and educated citizens all working together to understand and raise awareness about water issues, prevent water pollution, and improve water quality. Our Citizen Science Stream Team is a group of folks from all walks of life, including retired scientists, college professors, AmeriCorps members, students from the University of Montana, and even high school students wanting to learn more about water monitoring and ready to take on the challenge of ensuring the health of our local watersheds.

Backcountry Stream Corps (BCSC) is our two-week summer program for high school-aged youth. We train our BCSC members in data collection and observation techniques and then lead them into the Rattlesnake Creek and Grant Creek Watersheds, in order to collect specialized data on the upstream, and less accessible reaches.

Our citizen science programs for youth include school programs along with experiential field trips to introduce river ecology and healthy watershed concepts to students in grades kindergarten to college. WENs field trips take place at streams and rivers across western Montana during fall and spring. Field trips are a great way for students to get field science experience and learn about their watershed from a scientific inquiry perspective. Although Covid safety has restricted some of our regular programming, we have been developing several out of the box activities to get our youth and families outside and learning about the importance of healthy water resources. Backyard and Family Citizen Science is a way for a variety of families to observe, explore, record, and share - contributing to the long-term data collection and stewardship of our water resources.water resources.