STREAM Girls comes to West Fork Kickapoo

For the second year in a row, Coulee Region Trout Unlimited (TU) and Girls Scouts of Wisconsin Badgerland collaborated in an innovative STREAM Girls event last Saturday at the West Fork Sportsman’s Club property in Avalanche. The weather was beautiful for the event, with mild temperatures and sunny blue skies.

STREAM Girls is Trout Unlimited’s watershed STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) program for girls. On the TU website, the program is described as “building confidence and breaking down barriers in science and the outdoors.” The program description explains that, through the eyes of a scientist, artist, and angler, girls can make a personal connection to their home waters. STREAM stands for Science, Technology, Recreation, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics.

Eleven girls from local Girls Scout chapters, as well as chapters in Onalaska and Sun Prairie, showed up for the lively, interactive event on the banks of the West Fork of the Kickapoo River – a world class trout stream.

“The STREAM Girls program of Trout Unlimited aligns with the Girl Scouts mission of building character, confidence and courage in our members,” explained Nick Harnish, the Girls Scouts of Wisconsin Badgerland Experience Enrichment Manager. “By giving girls this kind of experience, we are helping to break barriers to STEM careers and enjoyment of the outdoors for girls in the Driftless Region and everywhere.”

Women’s participation in STEM careers is an area where growth has been seen after efforts, like STREAM Girls, in recent years to support young women in pursuing those careers.

According to the U.S. Census, despite making up nearly half of the U.S. workforce, women are still vastly underrepresented in the STEM workforce. Women made gains – from eight percent of STEM workers in 1970 to 27 percent in 2019, but men still dominated the field. Men make up 52 percent of all U.S. workers but 73 percent of all STEM workers.

And, according to the Recreational Boating & Fishing Foundation (RBFF), more women picked up a rod and reel in 2021 than in any previous year, and now make up 36 percent of all anglers in the United States, the highest number on record for female participation in fishing. According to their report, out of more than four million first-time participants in 2022, 40 percent were women as were 46 percent of those who consider fishing

“We know through research that recruiting and retaining female anglers is critical to growing fishing and boating participation overall,” RBFF President and CEO Dave Chanda said. “The bottom line is, increasing female fishing participation is also good for business, and the industry stands to benefit greatly from focusing more on this growing audience.”

Girl Scouts who complete the STREAM Girls educational activities earn a ‘STREAM Girls’ badge for their sashes. In order to earn the badge, participation in the eight core activities of the program is required. Those core activities include:

• STREAM Walk

• Fly Casting

• Go with the Flow!

• Macroinvertebrate survey

• Fly-tying

• STREAM scavenger hunt and bracelets

• Reflection throughout

• Discussion throughout

On Saturday, the girls were seen alternating between fly casting instruction and practice, and taking a well-supervised walk in the relatively low-flow waters of the West Fork Kickapoo River. In a shelter at the West Fork Sportsman’s Club campground, snacks art materials, and fly-tying supplies lay waiting on the table.

“One of my casting mentors was a woman named Joan Wolf,” local TU member Joseph Meyer told the girls. “I learned so much from her, and do you know who the National Casting Champion in the U.S. is? It’s Joan Wolf! That’s not just in a woman’s division – she’s the national champion among all the fly casters who compete – men and women.”

Meyer said that Wolf is a dance instructor and “she understands timing.”

During the Stream Walk, the girls were encouraged to make a multi-sensory observation of the stream, looking at the water, plants, animals, weather, soil, rocks and the landscape. Later, they would follow science protocols to measure the condition of the stream, including the condition of the stream bank, water flows, ecosystem biodiversity, the streambed and water chemistry. They record their findings and discuss what human impacts there may be on the stream.

“Be quiet, and listen,” a Coulee Region Trout Unlimited volunteer leading the stream walk told the girls. “What do you hear? Do you hear crickets and the sound of the water flowing in the creek? Do you hear cars or trains or buses? Do you smell car exhaust?”

Girl Scout’s Harnish had only glowing things to say about what the experience offered girls.

“There is nothing more empowering that getting girls outdoors and active, and learning skills,” Harnish observed. “With this activity, and many others such as rock climbing and paddling, our girls are out there breaking barriers.”

The Girl Scouts present also enthusiastically chimed in, “and we get to eat cookies!”

Kristal Welter, one of the Coulee Region Trout Unlimited volunteers on-hand to help with the event was herself a Girl Scout, and claims “once a Girl Scout, always a Girl Scout.” She said that for her, Girls Scouts is a way to learn new things that you never knew you could.

“One of the artistic projects the girls will undertake is to make a bracelet reflecting different aspects of the stream,” Welter explained. “Those aspects are water, riffles, trees, short plants, the sky, animals and bugs.”

After sampling stream water for ‘macroinvertebrates’ or aquatic bugs, classifying and recording the organisms they find, the girls use the data they’ve acquired to give the stream on overall water quality score.

The sampling is followed by a discussion of the kinds of bugs that trout eat. This discussion leads directly into the lesson on fly tying.

Reached on Monday back in his office, Nick Harnish had only good things to say about the weekend the girls had spent in the Driftless.

“The girls had an absolute blast,” Harnish said. “Their feedback was that they had fun and learned something new.”

Harnish commented that he thinks the program as a whole is well thought out and is experiential in nature. He said that the girls learned plenty without realizing that they were learning. STREAM stands for Science, Technology, Recreation, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics, and Harnsih said the girls practiced these skills all under the theme of fly-fishing.

“I did hear one girl tell her dad when he picked her up that she would like to go get a fly rod,” Harnish said.