um their names are camo and blue I've always loved animals especially things that live in the sea I got this tiger shark somewhere in Florida it's actually a puppet my name is Cash Daniels I'm from Chattanooga Tennessee and I am known as the conservation [Music] kid I got inspired to clean up the river when I found out that 80% of all ocean trash comes from Rivers so I had to do something about that so I started River cleanups when I was seven so I had been doing this for a whole six years now a
nd then people just started calling me the conservation kid and it sort of just stuck I founded the cleanup kids with my friend Ella who lives in Canada to reach kids all over the world and last year we reached our goal to pick up 1 million pieces of trash by the end of the year this award is the credential Spirit of community and this is the glory Baron prize hellbender youth award and this is the we naturalist people of nature [Music] award it's been raining for days do you want boots probably
be a good idea right shouldn't be been reading all right my mom and dad they didn't litter or anything but they were not big conservationists and one day I just said why don't we recycle and now we have recycling bins and they just help me along the [Music] way it's for sure a full-time job dealing with him dealing with his emails and his phone calls and everything that he has going on it's definitely not what I signed up for not what I thought I'd be doing but here we are I would much rather h
im be in the outdoors than stuck on a screen all day so I'll do anything I can to help him pursue his passion because it is changing the world it's doing something for the greater good that most kids aren't concerned [Music] about so I do run a recycling program for aluminum cans you didn't you didn't drink all these beer did you okay my mom's car smells like a brewery you smells like a brewery thank you thank you sir have a good [Music] one so Cashville tell you I cut him off of our bank accoun
t and I did because I couldn't afford him anymore he wanted all of this money to do all of these things which is great but you also have to learn that there's a business side of it you need to learn how to make money be an entrepreneur do something to earn money to put it back into a different way so he started he was like you know what I can make money from aluminum they're endlessly recycled that nothing ever goes to waste let's take that money and turn it into something else that's how I make
money so I can make the monofilament bins what I'm building right now are bins for fishing lines right here it goes like this so the fishing line can't blow out and fishermen put like fishing lures or line that they don't use anymore in here I see fishing lineon hanging from trees from everywhere so these bins help with that problem by fishermen putting their line in them and I actually recycle them and I send it to Berkeley Fishing that make fishing habitats out of it so something that would b
e harming the environment if it got into the river is actually giving back to it so it's a closed loop system right now I'm going to towards a pier to put up my monofilament bin putting this here is a good spot because they're going to be coming out this way so so we are here at the Chattanooga Creek so our goal for today is to clean this place up make it look like there's no trash here and do the best we can can yeah step the water there we go we got here and picked up all of these tires nobody
really recycles tires but you have to pay to get them recycled so people don't really do that even though it don't cost that much they still just dump it in the river instead of recycling [Music] one okay he's taking something out of the environment in two ways aluminum and plastic that could harm it recycling all of it making money and turning everything into something better then he found [Music] it good afternoon guys we have the honor and the privilege to get to hear from cash the conservat
ion kid Daniels today my name is Cash Daniels and I am known as the conservation kid I work along the Tennessee River which is the river we have here and not just because that's where we live and that's where we're close to but because it is the most PL microplastics than any other River tested in the entire world so this is a little bit of a representation of microplastics so and how much plastic sinks so even though you don't see much when you go out onto the river 60 to 70% of all plastic act
ually sinks and those fish that eat those microplastics are carried up through the food chain to us when I go to schools I think what inspires the kids is that there's another kid doing it and not just another adult coming to tell them about it do you expect to keep doing this when you become an adult yes I do expect to keep doing this when I get older to help the environment in a real profession there's lots of jobs you could do you could make movies about the river and how conservation is impo
rtant you could be a wildlife biologist study animals and help them there's lots and lots of jobs you can do to help [Applause] so cash is leading this incredible effort to clean up our waterways around the greater Chattanooga area the Tennessee River Gorge trust is a nonprofit Land Trust in the Chattanooga area so we wanted to bring him out here and show him that what he's doing really matters and it does have an impact we're taking cash down the Tennessee River Gorge to our bird Observatory an
d oh you see one oh yeah right there oh I see it yeah our Wildlife Research is centered around Birds and the big ones that we've been researching as of late are the worm eating warbler the Louisiana water thrush and the belted king [Music] fisher here at the River Gorge trust we use bird as an indicator species indicator species refers to some sort of species of Wildlife that its presence or absence can indicate the overall health of your environment so here if we have a flourishing population o
f this certain bird species that might indicate that our forests are healthy and thriving beyond anything one of the things that I'm most impressed with cash is just how dedicated and motivated he is and it really gives us hope that the River Gorge trust and inspires us to keep working hard because we know we have a younger generation coming behind us that's going to continue to carry on this conservation Legacy to find someone at that age that is that passionate about the outdoors and doing wha
t's right and leaving a legacy for other kids and uh and what's so cool about cash is when he goes and talks to the kids they can relate kids are important because they're the Next Generation and even though kids may be a small part of the population we are 100% of the future but when I'm on the river I feel just I'm where I'm supposed to be and where I [Music] belong to see that next Generation uh to have the passion and the love of the outdoors that I once had as a kid it's it's it's good for
the soul [Music] man my dream of the future would be to not see any plastic when I go to the river or the ocean just to have a clean world to carry on the legacy of the conservationist came before me like Steve Irwin my friend Jim AB NY all the great conservationists I feel like it's my responsibility and all of our responsibility carry on their [Music] [Music] legacy [Music]
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