After promising to listen, stick together, be safe and respect nature and one another, the St. Helena Primary School students were ready for Jonny Ehlers’ questions.

“What animal, do you think, lives in a creek?” Ehlers asked the 38 kindergartners, first- and second-graders gathered at White Barn in St. Helena for a day of games, storytelling, and weed pulling along Heath Canyon Creek.

“Frogs!” answered Christian Cia, a second grader.

“A turtle!” replied Ariana Bautista, another second grader, as others raised their hand.

“Do you think a fish would live in a creek?” Ehlers asked. He then led the boys and girls to their first game of the day — an obstacle course for steelhead trout, with the kids playing the role of the fish.

Ehlers, like Mike Harper, another naturalist on hand at last week’s adventure, work for Acorn Soupe, a nonprofit that organizes outdoorsy field trips in Napa and Sonoma counties. Acorn Soupe, which adds the “e” in “soupe” for “environment,” wants to connect children to nature through hands-on education.

“I feel like I’m doing something worthwhile and it makes me feel good,” said Harper, a former rancher in Humboldt County, sea kayaker in West Marin County and outdoor challenge-course facilitator.

Harper and Ehlers, a UC Santa Cruz graduate and a credentialed teacher, are part of a growing field.

Natural force

Celeste Royer, director of the California Regional Environmental Education Community, a project of the California Department of Education that connects schools with environmental educators, said there are at least 60 outdoor school programs employing an estimated 600 naturalists in California. Royer said naturalists include people who have majored in science, docent volunteers and English classroom teachers who discovered they wanted to change pace and teach in an outdoor setting.

Naturalists not only need to know about biology and ecology, they need to know how to teach.

“You need to get people excited about it,” she said.

According to Colorado-based National Association of Interpretation’s Tim Merriman, there are about 20,000 paid interpreters — or naturalists — in the United States. Another 500,000 volunteer at parks, museums, aquariums and zoos, he said.

Lara Hadhazy, who manages the restoration of the Heath Canyon Creek for the Napa County Resource Conservation District, was also at White Barn Thursday. She helped select the creekside site where nonnative shrubs are being replaced with native plants such as coast live oak, maple and valley oak trees.

“I think a naturalist is one who knows about the natural processes of biology, stream functions, natural life cycles for habitats, basically someone who is an ecologist,” said Hadhazy.

After further reflection, Hadhazy wrote in an e-mail that naturalists create an outdoor playground that's definitely more fun and rewarding than sitting in front of a television set. “They help kids at an early age have a relationship to nature and to themselves through hands-on experiences in the outdoors,” she wrote, adding the lessons on stewardship, awareness and respect for the native plants and animals will stay with students through life.

Eric Zimmerman, academic and internship coordinator for the Environmental Studies Program at UC Santa Barbara, said the number of environmental camps is growing because of the greater emphasis on environment education.

At UC Davis, Mark Schwartz, professor of environmental science, attributes the increased interest in environmental education to the public recognition that managing and restoring natural systems takes manpower.

Little stewards

Ehlers works nearly full-time for Acorn Soupe, while Harper is a substitute naturalist.

The money is nothing special in the naturalist profession, but Ehlers, said, “For me, it’s really my passion.”

Acorn Soupe offers programs at state parks as well as private lands. The Napa organization hopes to raise money to be able to employ its three naturalists full time.

As she watched her students Thursday, St. Helena Primary School teacher Michelle Parriott said children learn by doing.

“You take them out there, and they’ll remember it,” she said. The field trips give children a fresh perspective, she also said, adding they need to listen to the message multiple times from different people.

After all, everything that’s being done to and in the environment will ultimately affect them, Parriott said, noting the recent 58,000-gallon oil spill in the San Francisco Bay.

“They’re the stewards of the land,” she said of her students. “And if they don’t take care of it, what’s going to happen?”