PEEC Co-founder Michele Altherr stepped down from her position on the board earlier this month. Photo by Kirsten Laskey/ladailypost.comBy KIRSTEN LASKEY
Los Alamos Daily Post
kirsten@ladailypost.com
The idea for the Pajarito Environmental Education Center (PEEC) originated in 1999. That year, a community meeting was held to gauge people’s interest in establishing a nature center. At that meeting, 100 people showed up, including Michele Altherr.
“It really wowed people that this idea was something people were interested in,” she said. “I raised my hand to volunteer and that’s how it started.”
A simple raise of her hand led Altherr to give almost 20 years of service to PEEC. She stepped down as a founding board member Oct. 9; Altherr was the last founding member to leave the board.
Another founding member of PEEC, Chick Keller, described Altherr’s contributions to PEEC as “enormous.”
“Michele was one of the founders way back in the year 2000 and she brought a unique perspective … because she was a grade school teacher. So her contributions were just enormous,” Keller said.
She helped with numerous programs and incorporated teaching into PEEC, he said, adding, “She has just been the best.”
Fellow PEEC Founder Becky Shankland also commended Altherr. Pointing to Altherr’s career at the school district, Shankland said, “that was a great benefit for us especially in the early days because we were not so well known … she helped kids act on their environmental principles.”
Altherr, who is a sixth grade science teacher at Mountain Elementary School, said she was motivated to help establish a nature center because of her students. At the time, Altherr was teaching at Barranca Elementary School and every Wednesday she would take her students to Bayo Canyon to do science outside.
“I became aware that students’ knowledge of the local landscape was very limited and that concerned me,” she said.
For instance, Altherr said her students didn’t know that seeds for a pine tree were in pine cones.
“So I was concerned about children’s environmental literacy and I believe if you connect people with nature that is the first step to understanding and caring about it.”
She added it is something people need to be intentional about in the modern world because it is so easy to be plugged in and indoors.
PEEC founding board members along with Altherr, Keller and Shankland include Sarah Gustafson, Yvonne Keller, Tom Jervis, Michael Smith, Gordon Spingler and Claudia Lewis.
Before operating out of the Los Alamos Nature Center and before leasing the building on Orange Street from Los Alamos Public Schools, PEEC had no permanent home, Altherr said. The founding group offered hikes and their own expertise to the community. They also immediately started the Earth Day celebration in 2000. Altherr said they knew it would be their signature event.
In 2005, the school district leased PEEC its building on Orange Street and PEEC moved again in 2015 into the newly built Los Alamos Nature Center.
Part of PEEC’s success, Altherr said, is its connection to the community.
“People; we valued every single relationship and the people who started PEEC had a common vision to create a nature center with a strong educational outreach program. We communicated that vision and we were passionate. We were very good at communicating our vision,” she said.
This vision for a nature center, Altherr added, was presented through personal connections and the idea grew.
PEEC has three core values, Altherr explained, which are: nature, education and community.
“People are central to what we do. We always knew that from the get go. We have always attracted and continue to attract the most amazing volunteers.”
While creating relationships was important, Altherr said getting a physical location for PEEC was a huge help. She added deciding to focus on education rather than become political was an early decision.
As a teacher Altherr said, “I believe everything is education. If you want people to care, you have to be connected. Our role is to connect people to nature and let the person decide what they want to do.”
A few of the programs Altherr helped establish include the Nature Odyssey summer camp at the Valles Caldera National Preserve as well as the Park Flight Field Trip, which allows young people to help with bird banding.
Shankland said Altherr also helped create the Kinnick Club. The club worked on a variety of projects including a ban on plastic bags and visiting Jane Goodall in Santa Fe. Altherr also established PEEC’s animal exhibits, which initially featured a turtle, salamanders, an ant farm, a skink and a toad.
“I just wanted the place to be interactive and nothing is more interactive than animals,” she said.
Altherr said she decided to step down from the PEEC board because the time felt right. She added she feels that PEEC is in great hands with the newest set of board members.
“The nature center … is in such great hands … we have an outstanding staff and board members,” Altherr said. “It is such a fabulous organization. I have no doubt that it is going to endure.”
She may be stepping down from the PEEC board but Altherr is by no means slowing down. Altherr describes herself as a champion of early ideas and she is looking at a number of programs. Plus, Altherr won the Dorothy Hoard Stewardship award last year for her work with PEEC and part of the award will go toward doing a project with sixth grade students so she is looking at ideas for the project.
Her interest and work for the environment expands to her whole family. Altherr said her daughter, Heather, works in forest conservation in Zambia where she works with villagers and their chiefs to preserve native forests.
Meanwhile, her son, Forest, studied the spread of disease as it is impacted by climate change in Peru. He now works at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
“We didn’t know much about climate change when my children were little and now it is a whole field of study,” she said. “That is the nature of the future. We are educating children for jobs that have not been invented yet.”
Altherr has lived in the area for 25 years and is in her 21st year of teaching for Los Alamos Public Schools.
