‘Envirothon’ team just misses taking provincial title

The Fort Frances High School “Envirothon” team just missed a trip to Nova Scotia for the North American finals after taking second at the provincials in Thunder Bay last week.
“They were so close. It’s too bad there was nothing for second place,” science teacher Duane Roen said, noting the Fort High team was only 1.2 percent behind the top one.
“It could have gone either way,” said Roen.
The team of five students–Aimee Pelletier, Melanie Halvorsen, Devan Hahkala, Greg Halvorsen, and Brendan Cumming–spent two days resolving a number of problems at two Thunder Bay sites.
More than 80 students from 16 teams trekked in the bush and waded through water in search of the solutions.
“We counted hundreds of trees,” recalled Melanie Halvorsen, who plans to pursue science at university next year. She said she’s enjoyed working with the forest industry and seeing what they are doing to conserve natural resources.
The Ontario Forestry Association hosted the event as well as the regional competitions across the province.
A member of each team was given a binder of information on one of the five categories in the competition (aquatics, soils, forestry, wildlife, and wetlands) that were studied by the students throughout the year in preparation for the regional and provincial finals.
“We did a lot of weekends where we went out into the bush,” said Roen.
Although the local team will not move on to Nova Scotia, members agreed there were a number of benefits to taking part in “Envirothon.”
“I learned a whole bunch of new species of hardwoods I didn’t know before and how hard it is to prepare a presentation in four hours,” said Pelletier.
All the teams finished the competition by preparing a presentation based on a topic they were given just four hours in advance. A panel of judges listened to the presentation, and the four finalists went on to present in front of all the contestants at the end of the competition.
“It makes students of our age more aware of the environment,” said Pelletier. “It was nice meeting 80 other students who are so interested in protecting the environment.”
The “Envirothon” competition has taken place in the U.S. for a number of years but just recently started in Canada. This was only the fifth year of competition in Northwestern Ontario.