BY KAREN BOSSICK

A student from Alturas Elementary School won a T-shirt design contest for the 2025 Big Wood River Clean-Up.

Third- and fourth-grade students from local elementary schools entered the contest, which was presented in partnership with Cox Communications. They responded to the prompt: “What does a clean river mean to you?”

One winner from each school was selected with the winning artwork featured as this year’s logo for event T-shirts.

This year’s winning T-shirt features a fishing rod about to hook a trout. Above it are the words, “Big Wood River Clean-Up.”

A Syringa Mountain School art piece showed colorful mountain peaks with black pencil-like points with a blue river running through it. The Hailey Elementary School piece showed a  river and mountains with the words “Save the River” and “Cath (sic) fish. Then put them back.” And a Community School piece showed a child swinging from a tree next to the river with trout swimming in between trash.

The Big Wood River Clean-Up is now in its eighth year, attracting hundreds of volunteers, who fish out everything from tires to couches out of the river. Last year volunteers collected 440 pounds of trash from the Big Wood River.

“I had the idea for starting a community-wide clean-up day eight years ago when I noticed increasing levels of trash in our river,” said Ryan Santo, river project manager at the Wood River Land Trust.

“It’s fun to see what the Big Wood River Clean-Up has become for our community. Most importantly, it has become a way for community awareness and stewardship, with less trash being collected annually, which is a hopeful sign for the river’s future,” he added.