First-Year Students Help Clean Up National Parks

Balloons, fishing lines, glass bottles, chairs, flip flops, a can of car oil—these are just a few of the items 11 first-year students at Rollins College collected during a recent trip. As part of the Rollins Immersion: Citizens Take Action program, students spent two days in Everglades and Biscayne National Parks cleaning up trash and learning about Florida’s diverse ecosystems and ways to help protect them.

For the participants, this immersion trip was a reminder that even though pollution and waste can have a negative effect on the environment, their involvement can produce positive, long-lasting results.

“We worked alongside park rangers at Biscayne National Park who talked about the increase in environmental protection laws since when they were kids,” said Gabe Anderson, assistant director of Explorations. “These rangers gave first-hand accounts of how lobbying for environmental issues have had tangible results, such as saving endangered species from extinction.”