Everybody agreed that Mother Nature could have been more cooperative in the weather department. But participants in the inaugural Kane-DuPage Envirothon remained undaunted as they slogged from tent to tent Wednesday on the grounds of the Morton Arboretum under sometimes-rainy skies, testing their knowledge of environmental issues.
“It’s fun,” said Andrea Lavin, 17, as she and fellow Downers Grove North High School classmates Sarah Schmidt, 16, and Heather Parris, 18, headed to the Soils Station tent to identify different types of dirt. The teens had just completed a quiz at the nearby Aquatics Station tent, where, Parris said, things had gone better than expected.
“The test wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be,” Parris said.
Ten teams from area high schools and the city of Chicago competed in the contest, co-sponsored by the Kane-DuPage Soil & Water Conservation District and the Wheaton-based Conservation Foundation. Students rotated among four tents set up near the banks of Crabapple Lake, listening to presentations by environmentalists and learning about environmental careers. Educational sessions were followed by written quizzes and hands-on tests in the fields of soils, wildlife, aquatics and forestry.
“The forestry hands-on test is really hard,” noted Barbara Sheffer, district manager for the Soil & Water Conservation District. “They have to identify 10 tree species by looking at leafless twigs.”
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Participating high schools in addition to Downers Grove North were Bartlett, Batavia, Chicago High School for Agriculture Sciences, Downers Grove North, Dundee-Crown in Carpentersville, Elgin, Glenbard East in Lombard, St. Charles, Westmont and Wheaton-Warrenville South.
High-scoring teams will advance to the State Envirothon in May in Monticello, Ill. Top-scoring team at the state level will advance to the National Envirothon July 27-Aug. 1 in East Lansing, Mich.
Sponsors said they hope to make the Kane-DuPage Envirothon an annual event. Though Envirothon competitions are new to DuPage and Kane Counties, they have been in existence nationally for 18 years.