The following is my brief description of EYNC but drawing heavily from the "History" page of the Effie Yeaw Nature Center website (www.sacnaturecenter.com), which contains much more detail about the Center’s history and activities.
The Effie Yeaw Nature Center is a magical place. Located along the American River in Carmichael, a small urban community just 10 miles east of downtown Sacramento, EYNC is a refuge for a wonderful variety of wild plants and animals, as well as for people looking for a convenient window into the natural world. Staffed by an amazing group of employees and volunteers, EYNC includes a visitor center complete with live animals, interpretative exhibits, educational books and gifts, and a wide variety of year-round programs for all ages. The visitor center sits in the edge of a 100 acre preserve with easy-to-navigate trails through riparian woodland, riverbed, and aquatic habitats.
The Nature Center is named for Effie Yeaw, a local school teacher, conservationist and environmental educator who began using the area to teach local groups about the area’s natural and cultural resources more than fifty years ago. The Effie Yeaw Nature Center was dedicated in 1976 and was operated as part of the Sacramento County Parks Department until 2010, when the County withdrew funding. With the loss of public funding, the non-profit American River Natural History Association, which had already partnered with and supported EYNC for decades, undertook to raise the necessary funds to keep the Center open. ARNHA has done so successfully ever since, allowing countless numbers of visitors to enjoy the wildlife and participate in numerous interpretative programs, not to mention the thousands of local school children who either visit the Nature Center or are visited at their school by the Center’s traveling naturalists every year.
To quote from the EYNC website,
“Though Effie Yeaw died in 1970, her legacy lives on in the American River Parkway she helped to establish and in the Nature Center whose guiding philosophy is Effie’s genuine love for nature and children.
“Goals:
“To provide opportunities for the visitor that will promote awareness, appreciation, understanding and enjoyment of the natural and cultural resources of the Sacramento Region.
“To provide awareness and understanding of human interdependence within a finite ecosystem and the need to conserve its resources and protect its quality.”