Students from Lordsburg enjoy the Gila River as they look for macroinvertebrates at the Children's Water Festival (Photo by Carol Ann Fugagli)Beginning in 2004, the Children’s Water Festival has taken place in Grant County annually, offering elementary students from throughout the region a chance to study and explore our local watersheds. Over the last 14 years, various non-profits, the Forest Service, the New Mexico Environment Department, local school districts, and many volunteers have joined the effort to engage thousands of children in learning about their environment, rivers, and watersheds. The festival was initially held in town, focused on the Silver City watershed of San Vicente Creek. The Mimbres River has also been the site of the event, and currently the festival is held along the banks of the Gila River. The Children’s Water Festival was made possible this year with the help of many generous donations and the efforts of a diversity of instructors and volunteers. Carol Ann Fugagli is the Education and Outreach Director for the Upper Gila Watershed Alliance, and has been volunteering or helping to organize the festival for 10 years. “Environmental education is my passion. When I see the students in the river splashing around and shrieking with discovery at catching water insects, it fills me with pure joy. I am proud of our community and all of our supporters who help make this event happen.”

The Gila River is one of the longest rivers in the West, originating above 10,000 feet in the Mogollon Mountains of the Gila Wilderness and from the headwaters of the Black Range in the equally wild, Aldo Leopold Wilderness to the east, flowing 500 miles to its confluence with the Colorado River near the Mexico border.  Where it still flows wild in New Mexico, the Gila supports a vibrant riparian forest community of cottonwoods, sycamores, willows, and alders. Blackhawks, eagles, elk, javelina, cougars, and black bears all roam the river corridor, and many fish live here that are found nowhere else.

A young spiny softshell turtle was found in the mud of the Gila River during the Children's Water Fesitval (Photo by Carol Ann Fugagli) This year’s Children’s Water Festival was held at the Nature Conservancy’s Gila River Farm in Cliff and at the Gila National Forest’s Mogollon Box Day Use Area. For three separate days during the weeks of September 17 - October 5, several hundred fifth graders from Grant and Hidalgo Counties enjoyed a day of environmental immersion and fun at the river. Students explored the river bottom for macroinvertebrates, tested the water quality, and followed the course of the river as they learned how oxbows, cobble benches, and sandbars are formed. There were also hands-on activities in river crafts, native plant and pollinator interactions, and bird migration.

Tricia Hurley is one of the founding members of the Gila Conservation Education Center, a group that helped organize the event from 2007-2014 and continues to work with the event, “I keep teaching because I think it’s important to connect children to their natural environment and teach them to recognize the plants and animals around them. This way, they identify with a sense of place and ultimately will care about protecting the place they live,” said Hurley.

This year’s Children’s Water Festival is sponsored by the Upper Gila Watershed Alliance, a non-profit watershed protection and conservation organization working to promote the long-term health of the Upper Gila Watershed and its communities of life. Support also comes from the non-profit, Heart of the Gila, in memory of Ella Kirk, Ella Myers, and Michael Mahl, three teens who taught about the Gila River in classrooms and at the Children’s Water Festival in the spring of 2014. Their stewardship serves as a guiding principle to inspire young people to love, understand, and protect their environment.