As Arizona Western College continues to expand, a new home is being constructed for some new hard-shelled residents. It might be a mystery what is being built behind the AS building but very soon it will become the temporary home for many desert tortoises.
After AWC received the Heritage grant for schoolyard habitat improvement from Arizona Fish and Game, Biology Professor, Kevin Young decided to lead the project with the help of student, staff and faculty volunteers. Dozens AWC students and staff have come out to help out with project; "All together we have had about 300 hours of combined work invested in this project", mentions Young.
"The building technique we are using is called Super Adobe, it doesn't cost much for the materials but it does require a lot of work," says Young. The walls of the pen are going to be made out of sandbags filled with a mixture of gravel and clay, then stacked to form a wall, and finally they will be plastered.
According to Young the main purpose of this project is to improve the tortoise habitat, plant a variety of native species of plants around the pens, and make a nice place for people to relax and enjoy the wild life. If things go as planned, this entire project should be completed before the end of the 2014 spring semester
"This is going to be like the Humane Society for tortoises," says Young, "we aren't planning on keeping them here forever; this is just a holding pen so we can teach people about them and if they chose to adopt one, they can." Overall the project seems to be going as planned and volunteer students, faculty and staff will be able to see their hard work pay off and enjoyed by some happy tortoises.
You can now listen online and learn what HIPSTERS is all about, thanks to last week's Arizona Edition wherein KAWC's Maya Springhawk Robnett came on site and interviewed participants. Thanks Maya for helping document the story (and for helping build!). We are SO CLOSE to finishing the super adobe walls on the east pen and are making good progress on the west pen, so time is short for anyone else who wants to look back in 20 years and say "see this section of wall I built that!" Contact Kevin Young (kevin.young@azwestern.edu) to be a part of the historical effort this week.
Photos by Karla Aguilar
