S.C. college students sacrifice Myrtle Beach spring break for wildlife conservation efforts

Spring Break!

It’s that time of year that fills college students with a sense of excitement and adventure. Freedom from the oppression of dull coursework. The chance to make memories with their friends.

Over the next few weeks, Myrtle Beach will be filled with sunbathing students, beach volleyball games, cruising on the boulevard, balcony parties and packed nightclubs.

Just a few miles inland but a world away from the beach party, these college students have devoted their spring break to the hard, dirty work of helping maintain the Waccamaw National Wildlife Refuge.

Nine cadets from The Citadel Military College of South Carolina volunteered to work on the refuge, which consists of wetland and forest habitats along the Waccamaw and Great Pee Dee Rivers of Horry and Georgetown counties.

Organized by The Citadel’s Krause Center for Leadership and Ethics and in partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the students ranging from freshmen to juniors, are spending their ten days of freedom working on projects to improve the infrastructure of the refuge and to preserve the environment that draws both human and wildlife to the area.

On Wednesday morning, as the cadets pounded fence posts into the dusty ground to protect a wildlife food plot from the ravages of wild pigs, one cadet asked, “what muscles do you think we’re working?” Another responded, “it feels like every last one of them.”

Over on the Great Pee Dee river, Craig Sasser, refuge manager, piloted two cadets on his boat through winding rice field creeks as alligators slid from the banks and ospreys hunted over head. Working posts into the marsh mud, and contorting themselves on the bow of the boat, the students nailed up new wood duck boxes that will soon be home to a fresh family of chicks.

Earlier in the week the cadets worked to clear growth and debris from the historic cemeteries on Sandy Island.

According to Mandy Mims, assistant director of service learning and community engagement at The Citadel, the students “work hard and play hard,” while on these breaks away from The Citadel’s demanding class structure.

But it’s not all work. Time off has included educational opportunities like a seminar on the king rails, a marsh bird that lives in the refuge, and handling wildlife in the visitor center.

A favorite activity, Mims said, was walking a recently burned field and collecting skeletal remains of some of the native wildlife.

Fun for some - but a very different kind of fun than their fellow college students will be having along the Grand Strand.

This story was originally published March 16, 2023 at 12:53 PM.