Wednesday, January 4, 2023
Community
By News and Internal Communications
By Regina Perez
RIO GRANDE VALLEY, TEXAS – UTRGV students and faculty helped in the restoring of local nature on Dec. 10 during the Precinct 4 Community Forest Restoration Planting Event.
The event, held at the San Carlos Endowment Center, was an opportunity for students to plant trees to reforest one acre of the center. The effort was a collaboration between American Forests, Hidalgo County Precinct 4 and UTRGV, with aid from the Laura Jane Musser Fund.
Dr. Teresa Feria Arroyo, an associate professor from the UTRGV Biology Department, co-led the event, with students from her upper-level courses – Global Change Ecology and Conservation Biology – lending a hand as part of the service-learning and community engagement component of the classes.
“The students came here for a hands-on real-life experience, and applied what they have learned in class,” Feria said.
In addition to planting the trees, students participated in the preparation and layout of the plants prior to the event. Feria´s partnership with Alicia Rodriguez, the Hidalgo County site supervisor for Endowment Community Center PCT 4, led to the collaboration.
Rodriguez emphasized one goal of the one-acre site will be to educate the community on nature.
“In the future, there is going to be an area where you will be able to enjoy and maybe have a class …. A lot of nice things are coming,” Rodriguez said.
The planting event was part of the Community Forest Restoration and Education Literacy Program that engages community residents in local environment topics and design.
“The idea for this planting event is to bring the concept of restoration, which has been going on in the Valley for about 30 years through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other groups, to the community,” said Jon Dale, director of American Forests – Rio Grande Valley and Mexico.
American Forests sustains thornforest reforestation programs in the Valley and Mexico. Dale, who co-led the event, said he is currently working with UTRGV professors to understand climate change and its effect on local species.
Cassandra Sauceda, a biology major and a student in Feria’s class said participating in the reforestation event helped her learn about the importance of working and volunteering locally.
“I think this is a really good experience. I´ve never done anything this big,” Sauceda said. “In the future when we come back, this is going to be part of history. You can say that you were part of this.”
Follow the UTRGV Office for Sustainability on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/ofs_utrgv/) to learn more about the university’s commitment to building key partnerships and future sustainability events.
ABOUT UTRGV
The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) was created by the Texas Legislature in 2013 as the first major public university of the 21st century in Texas. This transformative initiative provided the opportunity to expand educational opportunities in the Rio Grande Valley, including a new School of Medicine, and made it possible for residents of the region to benefit from the Permanent University Fund – a public endowment contributing support to the University of Texas System and other institutions.
UTRGV has campuses and off-campus research and teaching sites throughout the Rio Grande Valley including in Boca Chica Beach, Brownsville (formerly The University of Texas at Brownsville campus), Edinburg (formerly The University of Texas-Pan American campus), Harlingen, McAllen, Port Isabel, Rio Grande City, and South Padre Island. UTRGV, a comprehensive academic institution, enrolled its first class in the fall of 2015, and the School of Medicine welcomed its first class in the summer of 2016.