April 20, 2009 — Students obviously got the message Monday at the Friends of V.I. National Park's annual Earth Day celebration, held at the park's Visitors' Center in Cruz Bay. About 700 students from six St. John schools attended.
"I like learning about the earth and I want to help it," said Zoya Otto, 12.
Otto, who attends the Infinite Possibilities Home School, was busy making paper out of recycled office paper at a table set up by Maho Bay Camps.
Another Infinite Possibilities student, Leequan Sykes, 12, likes the earth. He said he wants to keep it from drying out like other planets, because it's where he lives.
Guy Benjamin School teacher Lisa Penn, shepherding her class of fifth graders to each of the presentations, hoped they would learn more respect for the earth.
"Too many kids are casually dropping things or breaking them with no kind of consciousness," she said.
The park joined forces with the Friends and the Audubon Society of the Virgin Islands to present hats to the approximately 40 fifth and sixth graders from Guy Benjamin and Julius E. Sprauve schools who participated in the park's Junior Ranger program.
Park Superintendent Mark Hardgrove told the junior rangers that 20 years from now, he hopes to be "a little old man standing under a tree" while one of them is the superintendent handing out hats to another group of junior rangers.
"And you know we have a YCC program," he said, proselytizing about the park's Youth Conservation Corps to many of the junior rangers as they came forward to accept their hats.
The Earth Day celebration had more than a dozen organizations on hand with activities and information to help the students learn more about protecting the planet.
"Who knows what recycling is?" asked Susan DeBonis of the St. John Chapter of the Recycling Association of the Virgin Islands.
Aluminum cans that aren't recycled can end up in the ocean or on land, she said. However, if they're recycled, the cans can return to the store shelves in about two months.
The students put their muscles to work crushing cans in the organization's can crusher.
The University of the Virgin Islands Cooperative Extension Service was on hand to demonstrate composting. Extension agent Carlos Robles said the purpose was to show the students how to reduce the amount of yard waste going to the island's landfills.
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