CLINTON — The Clinton High School Envirothon team recently won fourth place in competition at the state level on Apr. 26 and 27.

Students competed in a Regional contest at the 4H fair grounds in Clinton on April 6 and brought home first place. The regional competition consisted of five tests. Students met with biologists in five areas, forestry, aquatics, wildlife, soils and conservation. The biologists lectured about a certain topic in each area. Usually the lectures consist of describing the topic including how to identify it, why it is important and effects, good and bad, on the environment.

Four of the test subjects stay the same from year to year (forestry, soils, aquatics, and wildlife) the fifth subject changes year to year. This year was conservation.

During the lectures, students take notes and have hands-on experience with identification processes. Then, they are tested.

Part of the test comes from the lecture/study guides, and the other part is a practical about the identifications processes that were presented by the biologist.

At the State competition, students repeated a similar process, except the lectures and tests are a longer. However, sixth category is added.

Students are given a real life scenario with about five problems to solve, based on the fifth category. Students are given a bag of materials and about three hours to come up with a plan to solve all five problems and to create a presentation.

Students can use only what is in the bag for their presentation. The presentation is worth three test grades. The score is a combination of test scores along with the presentation score. 

The Clinton team was the top scorer in three areas, aquatics, wildlife and soils. The team tied with two other schools for the soil award.

Three teams scored the same and won both tie-breaker questions, so there was a three-way tie.

Courtesy of Torie Moreland, Clinton High School 

About Envirothon

The Illinois Envirothon is part of a continental environmental competition for high school students. Envirothon is a unique approach to educating high school students about the natural world around them.  The participating schools have teams made up of 5 students who work together to take written tests, as well as to develop and present a problem solving oral presentation.  The students are learning about the areas of aquatics, forestry, soils, wildlife and a current environmental issue, which changes each year.

Illinois is just one state that participates in this competition. For the National Envirothon there are 42 states and four provinces of Canada that compete for the top prize of $2,500 in college scholarship money and other prizes.  The program popularity is growing rapidly at the continental as well as the state levels.