A group of Hockaday girls and Warren Travis White students have been working together to organize additional events and speeches at “The Great Seed Bomb” on Saturday, March 31 from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.
“The Great Seed Bomb” event invites people of all ages and backgrounds to participate.
The purpose of the event is to increase the growth of natural grass along the sections of the Trinity River that have either been denuded of valuable vegetation and to clean up the trash around the area. The deprivation of grass has resulted in the erosion of the river banks and areas that have lost the biodiversity of plants and wildflowers required to sustain healthy populations of wildlife.
“The pollution in the Trinity River is a local problem that is constantly looked over,” Hockaday Junior and ZooCorps event speaker Sruthi Atluri said.
The event will begin with participants meeting at the Trinity River Audubon Center in Southwest Dallas. From there, partakers will bicycle or walk to the Prairie Restoration where they will be introduced to the event and listen to speakers, such as Atluri. The volunteers will then proceed to throw 250 containerized prairie grasses, including Bluestem, Indian Grass, Muhly, Switchgrass and Blue Grama, throughout the Trinity River.
Additionally, the Hockaday and W.T. White students added a special twist to the event: a raffle.
“The ZooCorps group is holding a trash pick up competition. Whoever participates is eligible for a $500 college scholarship,” Zoo Corps member and sophomore Karen Lin said.
Whoever participates in picking up trash obtains a ticket in the raffle box. The name drawn from that box is the winner.
Participants are encouraged to bring their own digging tools and gloves to the event.
The Hockaday and W.T. White students have frequently met throughout the entire year to help to plan this event.
Their discussions began with simple, vague world issues and moved to more local, pressing problems.
“Through the heartfelt discussions, we as a group were able to connect over topics that we were passionate about,” Atluri said.
“We all learned about how we get our drinking water from the Trinity River and the ecosystem that is impacted by pollution in the river-such as sea turtles,” Lin said.
More information on “The Great Seed Bomb” community service event and how to sign up for it can be accessed on x2Vol.
Story by Ashlye Dullye, Staff Writer
Photo courtesy of The Great Seed Bomb
