Building Forest Professionals for the Future

The NSFC acknowledges that the youth in our region are our future. It is important to provide our local youth with educational opportunities at an early age to help ensure students begin to develop a deep understanding of the many uses of our forests. As we grow and continue to develop new opportunities, the NSFC hopes that these students will grow with us, becoming increasingly interested in innovative uses for the forest.

This year, as part of the our education program objectives, we are sponsoring the Chapleau High School (CHS) Envirothon team as a pilot project. The Ontario Envirothon is an opportunity for high school students to take what they learn at school and through their own research and apply their skills in an outdoor setting with like-minded peers, to interact with nature directly. The Envirothon involves a competition that tests each team's environmental smarts, and provides students with an opportunity to build friendships while learning about and exploring the natural environment.

Through sponsoring the CHS team, we hope to spark an interest in Envirothon that can be expanded to other schools in the Northeast Superior region. Ideally, we will generate enough interest in the program to create our own region for Envirothon competition purposes within the schools and communities of the Northeast Superior region.

As part of the Envirothon team, the CHS students will participate in a fun field testing competition, take part in outdoor workshops, find solutions to environmental problems, gain exposure to career opportunities, and discover ways to improve the environment. The environmental areas that students are responsible for learning about are: soil, aquatics, wildlife, forestry, and an annual current issue. This year's current issue is "salt and freshwater estuaries". The CHS Envirothon team meets twice per week to learn and study together.

On March 3rd, the CHS team attended an Algoma Region Envirothon Forestry & Wildlife Workshop Day held in Sault Ste. Marie. In the morning, the students took part in two educational workshops: a tree identification workshop led by Matt Kendrick, and a forest field equipment and forest management plan writing workshop led by Laurie Thomson, both of the Sault's MNR, Forests Division.



In the afternoon, the group participated in four wildlife focused workshops led by second year Fish and Wildlife students from Sault College. The topics of these workshops were: Nocturnal Creatures, Animal Tracks & Signs, The Four Ungulate Species (deer, elk, moose, and caribou), and Invertebrates. The team had a great day, and are looking forward to more opportunities to build on their skills before competition day.



In mid April, Chapleau High School will match their skills against W.C Eaket Secondary School (Blind River), Central Algoma Secondary School (Desbarats), Korah Collegiate & Vocational School (Sault Ste. Marie) and Superior Heights Collegiate & Vocational School (Sault Ste. Marie) at the Algoma regional competition. The winning team from the regional competition will then advance to the Ontario Envirothon provincial competition to be held at the Tim Horton Onondaga Farms in St. George Ontario in early May. The winning team from the provincial competition will represent our province at the North American Canon Envirothon competition to be held in New Brunswick during July.



Anyone from the Northeast Superior region who is interested in creating an Envirothon team can contact:

Becky Hodgson
Education Coordinator
Northeast Superior Forest Community
becky.hodgson@nsfc.ca
(705) 864.2031 x 225