The Envirothon program is a competitive event for three to five member middle school teams to compete in a natural resources knowledge and ecology field day against other middle school teams.  It stimulates, reinforces, and enhances students’ interest in the environment and our state’s natural resources.  Resource subject areas are: Soils, Forestry, Wildlife, Aquatics, and Current Environmental Issues.

An entire school class or group may participate in studying the resources, however only 5 members may be on a team taking the test.  Each team must have an advisor and can have alternates.  Each class or school may have a maximum of three teams from each school.  However, each team will have to be registered.

There will be a resource station set up for each of the subject areas (Soils, Forestry, Wildlife, Aquatics, and Current Environmental Issues), usually in an outside setting, where the teams will be given an exam on each of the resource subjects.  The team with the highest score will be declared the Area 3 winner.  Only the top seven highest scoring teams will be eligible to compete at the state competition.

The written test will last for 10-15 minutes and will have approximately 20 questions. These questions are answered as a team and not individual students.  After finishing one station and at a set time, the teams will rotate to the next station.  The test papers are graded and the scores totaled to select the winner.

Test Stations

The five test stations will likely cover the following topics, but are not limited to these:

Wildlife                       Wildlife covers habitat, identification, foods, diseases, and management.

Aquatics                     Aquatics covers ecology of water, stream improvement, water quality, plants and animals living in or around water, pollution, wetlands, and conservation.

Forestry                     Forestry covers tree identification, forest ecology, insects, diseases, parts of plants and forest measurements.

Soils                           Soils covers classification, erosion, soil surveys, site suitability, current issues, profiles, soil characteristics, and conservation practices.

Current Env.  Issues     Current Environmental Issues cover any current or newsworthy environmental issue.

The station competition will be conducted by professionals from cooperating agencies and/or independent environmental organizations.

Who

Competition is open to Ecology clubs, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, soil judging teams, 4H clubs, home study groups, environmental groups, or any group interested in competing.  Team members must be middle school students (grades 5-8) and from the same school.  An exception is made for home study groups, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, 4-H Clubs team members being from the same school.  An advisor is required.