ENMU-Ruidoso Branch Community College Science Department Chair and Biology Instructor Shelly Elfelt recently took biology students on a variety of day-long field trips the week prior to spring break.
They went to a different location each day. The first day they traveled to Carlsbad Caverns National Park where they were able to tour the caverns and hiked into the cave three miles.
The next day they went to the Valley of Fires Recreation Area near Carrizozo, which is managed and maintained by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), to observe earless lizards and specifically their adaptations to the black lava rock of the valley.
The third day the class traveled to the Three Rivers Petroglyph Site in Tularosa, also managed by the BLM, where they observed the most earless lizards and hiked another 3.2 miles.
On the fourth day they traveled to White Sands National Park in the heart of the Tularosa Basin near Alamogordo for a presentation from the Ranger Biologists on adaptative radiation of earless lizards and other species found in White Sands. After the lesson, the students hiked 2.1 miles deep into the dunes.
Day five they traveled to the ABQ BioPark Zoo in Albuquerque to job shadow with a vertebrate zookeeper.
The students packed a cooler of food each day for a picnic on their hiking trips. The food was provided by the New Mexico Higher Education Food Security grant that the college received this year to address food insecurity in community college students.
