Youth Environmental Senate
Y.E.S.
YES's Latest Project
YES has organized 32 Miami-Dade County Public High School's in the first annual High School Everglades Restoration Symposium. YES and guest speakers will educate over 600 students about the vital water situation facing wildlife and human life in the Everglades. Speakers will include the Army Corps of Engineers, Everglades National Park scientists, a renoun biologist/ecologist, and YES Eco-Activists to provide a well-rounded vantage point on the issue.
Guides on beginning high school environmental groups will be given out along with reference brochures and pamphlets from the National Audobon Society, Army Corps of Engineers, Everglades Education Council, and others.
Students take Everglades to heart, set up Miami-Dade talk
by CYRIL T. ZANESKI
Published Saturday, May 1, 1999, in the Miami Herald
Some people who will actually be around to see water flow in the proposed Everglades restoration will have their first chance next week to getinvolved in the $7.8 billion plan.
In the spirit of the famous Earth Day teach-ins of the early 1970s, about 600 students from Miami-Dade's 32 public high schools will gather Thursday morning to hear about a project that's not scheduled to end until they are in their 50s.
"This is a chance to start teaching students about a project that they just might be working on some day," said Oliver Bernstein, a senior at Ransom Everglades School in Coconut Grove and one of the organizers of the High School Everglades Symposium.
"It's important that we start learning about it now," he said.
"Everybody in corporations and in business is going to have to get involved for this to succeed."
The meeting, which will go from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Southwest Miami Senior High School, represents a big formal step -- with the backing of School Board member Betsy Kaplan -- toward raising the level of student environmental activism above simple cleanups and recycling campaigns.
"When it comes to getting kids involved in protecting the Everglades, we usually aim too low," said Alan Farago, president of the Sierra Club's Miami Group.
"Kids are interested in school recycling projects and picking up litter, but in a way those activities pander to children and not to young adults who understand, intuitively, that the world they are inheriting is not in such good shape."
Farago inspired some of the student organizers of the Everglades teach-in last year when he spoke to them about how the county's plans for turning Homestead Air Reserve Base into a commercial airport posed a threat to Biscayne Bay and the Everglades.
His speech resulted in action: A student-led protest generated 6,000 postcards signed by young people of all grade levels expressing opposition to the plan. The cards were hand delivered last December to Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas.
"The postcard campaign really got a lot of people excited," Bernstein said.
"It put us on the map."
Bernstein and Tyler Schwartz, a senior at Gulliver Preparatory School, were among the leaders of that campaign. They're joined in organizing the Everglades teach-in by Julie Corbett, a senior at MAST Academy, and Alexander Lewy, a senior at North Miami Senior High. The four are leaders of the Youth Environmental Senate, a countywide network of student conservation clubs.
The key to the Everglades student symposium, Bernstein said, is that it is being held during the school day. That sends a strong message.
"We fought very hard to make it a field trip during the week," Bernstein said.
"If it's important enough to miss school for, then people will feel that it's important enough for them to really get involved."
The symposium shouldn't offer a simple, sugar-coated picture of the restoration plan that has been criticized by many conservationists for doing more to expand urban and agricultural water supplies than to help fix what ails
the Everglades.
The students will hear three points of view in the opening session. They'll hear from Theresa Woody of the Army Corps of Engineers, the lead agency that drew up the proposal. But they'll also hear from Bob Johnson, the research director at Everglades National Park, whose scientists have been critical of the
restoration effort, and from biologist George Dalrymple, a veteran, independent Everglades researcher.
At the end of the session, the students will discuss what they can do to spread the word to others at the schools. They're hoping that the school board will make the symposium an annual event.
"We'd like to help everybody see that environmental issues are much more important than any other issues," Bernstein said. "It's the bottom line. No matter what else people complain about, the other problems don't matter unless you save the environment you live in."
For information on how to get your Dade-County High School involved, or to join with Y.E.S., email YESFLA@hotmail.com.
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Last Modified: 07/01/99