Jr Ranger Intern Program at Radnor Lake State Natural Area (Session #1) 2016

June 13th thru June 18th was the first of three sessions of the Jr. Ranger Intern Program at Radnor Lake State Natural Area.

This partnership between Tennessee State Parks and Friends of Radnor Lake is in it’s 14th year with an average of 40 young interns (12 thru 18) working with the state park ranger staff over a 6 day period on numerous trails projects, river clean-ups and unique environmental education programming opportunities.

These interns work 4 days on trail projects at Radnor Lake State Natural Area with the park ranger staff, helping improve the trail system for our 1+ million visitors annually.
In addition, these interns spend 1 day working at the Barbara J. Mapp Aviary Education Center assisting with birds of prey care, reptile care and participating in environmental education programs by the park staff.

Last, these Jr. Ranger Interns travel off-site under the watchful eye of the ranger staff to clean up the Buffalo River near Flatwoods, Tennessee.

Just this past Friday, resulted in 15 tires collected from the river in addition to a dozen bags of trash.  The tires were then brought back to Nashville by the park ranger staff and recycled at Firestone on 8th Avenue as part of Bridgestone’s Tires4ward recycling program.

Over the past 3 1/2 years, thanks to this recycling program and the Jr. Ranger Intern Program at Radnor Lake this has resulted in over 135 tire collected from the Buffalo River and recycled.

Special thanks to Friends of Radnor Lake for funding this program over the past 14 years, the park staff for all the work each day to make this program possible, our partners at Flatwood Canoe Rental for assisting with the river clean-ups and Bridgestone for the Tires4ward program for assisting with our recycling efforts as part of this intern program.

Session #2 of the Jr. Ranger Intern Program at Radnor Lake begins on Saturday, June 25th.