1996-10-24_AgendaPacket - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

• Summer 1996 . . '~ By Scott Nichols On a warm and sunny Wednesday,. a team from Mabel-Canton High School in southwestern Minnesota beat 20 other teams to place first at the 1996 Minnesota Envirothon. Held May 21 at the•Wargo Nature Center in Lino Lakes, the hands-on environmental knowledge competi- tion drew high school teams•from • • all over Minnesota. Especially proud is Al Spande, the teacher/advisor foi•.theMabel= Canton team. Spande has taken his teams to the statewide event for the past three years, and. has watched as they placed second and. third. in the two previous competitions. - Spande, an ag teacher for Mabel- . Canton High School, said~that rules for the Envirothon are different• from those of the FFA competitions his students often participate in. In those contests,."everyone competes for themselves, and then you add up the team total. At the Envirothon, you have five people competing (on. Students at the. soils station examine an aerial photo of the park, trying to determine how changes in the landscape change the soils. Two students measure the height of a tree using one of the methods taught by DNR forestry presenters. one team) and-you have to come up with one answer...without a lot of arbitration and`without a lot of ~' conflict." "Students in the Envirothon follow • paths to five different stations where they must answer questions posed by resource experts infields such as forestry, wildlife, soils, and=aquat- ics. Presenters and Envirothon staff look for sites that allow presenters to ask as many location-specific questions as possible, such. as the height of ~ particular tree or the characteristics of alocation's soil. Participants in the state event have already won a regionalEnvirothon, usually organized by area Soil and Water Conservation Districts. The state-level Minnesota Envirothon is . organized by the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources. Spande's students may deal on a . daily basis with some ofthe issues and questions posed at the Envirothon. "We're in a limestone karst-type formation, and water gets Osprey specialist Vanessa Greene from the•Unversity of Minnesota's Raptor Center holds Ollie, athree-year old osprey, at the wildlife station of the Envirothon. Greene said a gunshot wound had, injured the bird seriously enough to keep it from being able to fish. effectively. Only raptors with. permanent injury are used for public education; others are treated and released. to be very important here; because you'll pour something out your back - door and it may end up five miles down the road in the neighbor's back yard,..Kids are very, very concerned, and they know what happens when they screw up down hereby dumping something bn the ground," he said. - - Spande said his students already have some expertise in areas such as biology, sales, and forestry. "We have so many opportunities in education today that you have to let kids excel in areas they want to excel in, and the environment right now is a~ hot topic for kids," he said. "It's surprising hc~w many kids are concerned what the environment is going to be like....they're paying • close attention to their future." Spande and his team are competing in this year'. s National Envirothon in Nebraska the last week of July. There will be 44 teams from. states ._all over the U.S., as well as some ; Canadian provinces, are attending. The Mabel-Canton team from Mabel, MN, poses with the plaque and t-shirts they won for placing first at the 1996 • Minnesota Envirothon. From (I) to (r}: AI Spande, advisor for the team, and students Matt•Erickson, Shane Vatland, Ernie Kleiboer, Mat Miller, and Brandon Rutter. Not pictured is team alternate Perry Rutter. photos: Scott Nichols