Have you ever thought of working outdoors with wildlife, fish, and beautiful views? What a way to accomplish your high school senior project!

Through a variety of adventures, the state Department of Natural Resources offer opportunities for high school students who need to complete their culminating projects. As a high school student, you have a chance to work outdoors and help the environment, while finishing high school requirements. 

Working with mentors and experts, you will learn how to collect data and research a project as a citizen scientist. Information that is collected is based on parameters set by the mentor. Help the agency research a species, its habitat, as well as the natural and human impacts to that species.       

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Example of Several Senior Projects with DNR partners

Nature Tourism: Nature Tourism is the travel through and enjoyment of the natural world. Students toured existing nature tourism sites and created a community profile through public surveys. Based on those surveys, they created a professional report of the findings. The report made recommendations for enhancing nature tourism.

Purple Martins: Students were trained to monitor Purple Martins for numbers and behaviors of this species. For three months they monitored and recorded the observations every 10 days for two hours just before sunset. After the monitoring period was up, the students compiled the data and presented to DNR and Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife.

NatureMapping with the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife

NatureMapping is a program that builds connections between schools, citizens, and researchers while providing hands-on learning opportunities. One student conducted research related to the intertidal zones and received a brief NatureMapping overview. To bring awareness, he presented a video and power point to his local community. 

Bird Survey: Students involved in this project were trained to identify species of birds and how to survey the species. Their research will be used to assist in current and future habitat enhancement decisions for the Parks and Recreation Department of Tumwater.

Salmon Spawning: Teams of students were trained and sent out to the rivers and creeks to count the salmon that were alive and dead. They also got to perform a dissection to see if the dead salmon had completed spawning.

Other Projects

If you have an interest in these projects or any other aspect of natural resources or land management, please contact Janet Pearce at janet.pearce@dnr.wa.gov or (360) 902-1122.