Spring-Ford 7th Grade Center Earns Third Place in Middle School Envirothon

The Montgomery County Conservation District held its annual Envirothon May 1 – 3, which featured student teams from several of the county’s elementary, middle and high schools; 18 schools in all, including Spring-Ford 7th Grade Center.

The Envirothon, which started state-wide in 1976, is designed to expose youth to nature through which they can relate how humans impact the natural world, while providing invaluable lessons for understanding ecosystems and our environment, according to the Envirothon website.

Montgomery County’s Conservation District has three versions of the Envirothon, one for each school level.

As previously reported on Patch, at the middle school level, which is similar to the high school level Envirothon competitions, teams of students worked together to test their knowledge in the following areas:

• Soils and Land Use

• Aquatic Ecology

• Forestry

• Wildlife

• A current Environmental Topic – this year's topic was “Grazing livestock for improving herd health and land management.”

This year, five middle school teams participated in the Envirothon — 11 teams in all. The middle school level competition took place outdoors at the Lower Perkiomen Valley Park in Oaks, whose tests were facilitated by various local, state and federal environmentally based agencies.

The five participating Montgomery County Middle School teams were:

• Spring-Ford 7th Grade Center
• Pennbrook Middle School
• Abington Junior High School
• Penndale Middle School
• Souderton Charter School Collaborative]

Spring-Ford 7th-grade Center earned a third-place finish; Abington Junior High School earned a second place finish; and Souderton Charter School Collaborative was this year’s middle school county champion.

The middle school participants must wait until the High School Envirothon in order to have the opportunity to advance to the state and national Envirothon competions. 

The 2013 Envirothon opened on May 1 with an elementary version of the event, which was more of a science field day than a competition, with seven schools participating:

• EMC
• West Broad St. Elementary
• Franconia Elementary
• Lower Salford Elementary       
• Vernfield Elementary
• Oak Ridge Elementary
• Souderton Charter School Collaborative

For more information visit www.montgomeryconservation.org/envirothon.htm or www.envirothonpa.org.