Blue Thumb Volunteer Trainings

Stay tuned for Blue Thumb Training in Oklahoma City, June 3-4!

From the Director

As many of you know, Becky Zawalski, our Field Education Coordinator who covered the western half of the state, recently moved to pursue a new opportunity at the Merrimack River Watershed Council in Massachusetts. We will miss Becky terribly, but she will continue to work to protect streams and rivers in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. You can learn about the Merrimack River Watershed Council here.

Best wishes, Becky!

Rebecca Bond

Blue Thumb turns 30 this year! We have a lot of fun things planned, so stay tuned for news, updates, and information on how to participate!

Spend Earth Day 2023 with your Blue Thumb family! Join us as we participate in the Great Salt Plains Birding and Crystal Digging Festival on April 22, 2023, from 10 am-1 pm. Register here.

Blue Thumb's 30th Birthday Celebration will be held at the Oklahoma Aquarium on Saturday, May 20th, from 10 am-2 pm. This event is for current and past volunteers. Certified volunteers may bring a one guest. Lunch and admission to the Aquarium will be provided. Please register here.

From the Volunteer Coordinator

A Watershed West Side “Deep Dive”

My Blue Thumb partner Jeffrey and I had two guests join us for our monthly monitoring on Coal Creek at Morris Park in Glenpool in March.  The new Glenpool Public Works Director Jesse Hale and the Glenpool Street and Parks Superintendent Ron Morey contacted me in advance and met us creek side.  Once the basic creek work was done they joined us at the Glenpool Public Library for the completion of testing.  All results were typical.

During the testing Jeffrey and I told the two men about Blue Thumb, what a Blue Thumb training is like, and a little about the tests we were doing.  Mr. Hale shared with us that he has a goal of creating a “disk golf course” on the west side of Coal Creek.  Ron took leave but Jeffrey, Mr. Hale, and I met back at Morris Park to take a closer look at the land on the west side of Coal Creek, where the golf course is be added.

I had not been on that side of Coal Creek before.  It is a bit of a bramble, but our two hours of wandering around were very insightful. 

A few observations:

• There are two ponds along Coal Creek that are actually small oxbow lakes
• The riparian area on the west side of Coal Creek is much deeper than that on the east side
• There is enough land on the west side of the stream for this area to be considered a small wildlife reserve
• There are some beautiful places to take a look at Coal Creek from the west side, although it is a green briar haven
• If the city does land clearing on the west side, might they consider letting the riparian area to east grow a little wider?

What will it mean to have a disk golf course along Coal Creek?  The City’s plan is for the woodland to be left primarily intact, but of course there have to be flyable fairways.  Will this be much of a disturbance to the wildlife?  Will this bring people out to the stream to gain a greater appreciation for it?  Can we include educational signage that will encourage visitors to make nature observations? 

Mr. Hale appeared to be onboard with having the disk golf course to be created in harmony with the wildness that is currently the west bank of Coal Creek.  The City took it upon themselves to say “Let’s talk to the Blue Thumb people.”  All Blue Thumb volunteers might want to consider the value of talking to the employees of the city where your site is, or the county commissioners if you are not in city limits. Be a familiar face, let those around you know that your local stream has an advocate.  It can only be a plus for the wild places we love.

Do you stay up to date by visiting the Blue Thumb Facebook Page? 

The Blue Thumb staff members work to stay in touch with volunteers through visits at the stream, bug-picking events, emails, texts, and phone calls.  In honor of our 30^th Birthday Celebration we have a series of field trips planned as well.  We also send out this monthly e-newsletter to keep volunteers updated. 

As many volunteers know, we use Facebook and Instagram to recognize good work, showcase the beauty of Oklahoma, and inform volunteers and others about upcoming events.  Social media is a tool we like and have come to depend on to help us protect streams, rivers and lakes. 

A quick scroll through our Facebook page found the following recent posts:

• Winter bug collections and on-site quality assurance activities
• The Tahlequah Blue Thumb training
• An article in the Tahlequah News Press about the Tahlequah training
• Advertisement and a link to “Understanding Data”
• Kim Shaw being the recipient of the Oklahoma Association of Conservation Districts Employee Group President’s Award
• The 30^th Anniversary of Blue Thumb Video and
• Volunteers working the Greater Tulsa Home and Garden Show

Check us out on social media!  And also tell your friends and family to check us out and share the content for greater reach.  It is another way for us to do the good work of inspiring others to take care of the earth – starting with local streams.

Cheryl Cheadle
Volunteer Coordinator

To our Monthly Monitors:

What’s new with QA? Well, we had our first of three webinars for this year on the topic of data. Thursday evening, March 9^th, from 6-7 pm, we held a live webinar and talked about understanding data. You can watch a recording of the webinar here.

Passcode: e+2C83iM   

If you have any questions from this webinar, please reach out to me.

Our next webinar will be Thursday evening, June 8^th, from 6-7pm. This webinar will be about interpreting chemical data. We will get more into the nuts and bolts and actual numbers of the chemical data. We hope you join us live, but this will also be recorded so you can watch it later if needed.

As I am writing this (3/16/2023) our winter bug collecting and QA season for 2023 will officially end tomorrow. All the paperwork is not in yet, but of the QA assessments I have reviewed, there were some common mistakes. If you did a QA this winter, you will recall that our creek monitoring volunteers performed the entire oxygen test creek side (including the titration part that is done indoors). It is easy to make mistakes on the dissolved oxygen test. I encourage all creek monitoring volunteers to review the written testing instructions or instructional videos occasionally as a refresher. Some volunteers do other professional chemical tests on their own as part of their job. For many volunteers, chemical testing is new and unfamiliar. We understand that Blue Thumb creek monitoring is not your full-time job; life happens between trips to your creek. The point is not to memorize all the steps. In fact, we encourage you to use your instructions each time you monitor. Quarterly QA’s are put in place for many reasons. Two of these reasons are to keep all volunteers performing the tests the same way and to provide confirmation to volunteers that their results are accurate. I hear this a lot and it makes me very happy: "I keep getting below detection or the same results on my creek water, then when I test standard solutions at QA’s and get different readings for the same test, I feel more confident in my actions and my creek results." We value what you do for Blue Thumb, your stream and the environment. Keep up the GREAT work! Thanks everyone.

Kim Shaw
Blue Thumb QA Officer

Make the world a better place!

• Did you know that there is a whole association for Citizen Scientists? You can become a member and learn more about it here!
• Don't forget about the "Stream Selfie" project from the Izaak Walton League, the #trashtag movement, and tick testing!
• Here's a fun article about the discovery (and re-discovery) of a rare insect on the exterior wall of a Walmart in Arkansas. It's a fun tale of science in action. Read about the discovery here.

Oklahoma Conservation Commission

Oklahoma Conservation Districts

Project WET

Friends of Blue Thumb

Soil Health Program

Department of Environmental Quality

EnvironMentor

Macroinvertebrate ID Website