In the Nueces Delta marsh on Texas’ south coast, a group of middle-school students are throwing cast nets into the water. As they eagerly pull them out, their eyes and hands search the netting for fish, crabs and shrimp.
The program leader uses each organism captured as the starting point for a lesson and a discussion. The students hear the story of how these creatures have adapted to life in the specific environmental conditions of the Delta, and they learn how they can protect them—and their habitat—into the future.
Experiential learning of this kind is integral to protecting coastal resources, explains Kiersten Stanzel, Executive Director of Coastal Bend Bays and Estuaries Program (CBBEP), which delivers programs for children and youth on the 11,000-acre Nueces Delta Preserve.
“Unless you can get young people to see something and really, truly experience it, it's really difficult to get them to care about it,” she adds.
CBBEP protects more than 13,000 acres of wetland habitats and offers engaging field experiences for students, teachers, and the community.
Around 6,000 school students, ages 5 through 18, take part in CBBEP’s programs every year. Each educational experience is designed to align with the state curriculum, so that a visit to the Preserve augments the students’ classroom education.
The nonprofit is located in the city of Corpus Christi, on the Gulf of Mexico, but the organization’s work focuses on the entire Coastal Bend region. CBBEP’s programs are open to students in 12 counties, across 11,500 square miles of land.
CBBEP’s mission is to protect the bays and estuaries of the region while promoting continued economic growth and public use of the bays. In addition to its education programs, CBBEP acquires properties to conserve in perpetuity. To date, the organization has preserved more than 13,000 acres.
CBBEP’s stewardship work on preserved lands includes water quality improvements, shoreline protection and habitat restoration, particularly coastal bird habitat.
All of this important work is possible thanks to grants and donations from the community and numerous partners.
Enbridge, a partner in Project YaREN, a proposed clean ammonia production facility in Ingleside, TX, awarded CBBEP a $10,000 Fueling Futures grant in late 2024 to help the organization continue offering its education programs free of charge to students. We recognize CBBEP’s efforts to remove barriers for young learners to access high-quality, interactive education in nature, and we are proud to help CBBEP reach these young stewards of our natural resources.
