For the past six years, Coastal Plains Institute has been working to repatriate a salamander species, the striped newt, which completely disappeared from the Apalachicola National Forest. Our research site lies just south of Tallahassee, and centers around a unique landscape feature called an ephemeral wetland.

While we do offer field trips, not every student in Tallahassee can come out to our wetlands. Our Wetland Wagon program will bring our research and the wetlands into the classroom! Students will have the opportunity to interact with one of our ecologists as well as some of the unique amphibian species that depend on ephemeral wetlands, all within the framework of an educational standards-aligned lesson. The Wetland Wagon is a way to engage students in our conservation efforts and hopefully influence their attitudes towards the longleaf pine ecosystem, ephemeral wetlands, the suite of amphibians that breed in these wetlands, and the challenges faced by all three of these components.