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JAY — The Spruce Mountain High School Envirothon Team, representing Maine, finished 20th overall out of teams from across the U.S. and Canada at the Conservation Foundation International Envirothon, held at Miami of Ohio University in Oxford, Ohio, from July 23 to 20.
It’s the 12 time the school has won the Maine competition and gone on to the international competition. Envirothon is sponsored internationally by the National Conservation Foundation and is the world’s largest environmental science competition. Teams must compete at their state level in all the categories.
Spruce Mountain was 6th in Aquatic Ecology; 11th in Soil Science; 17th in Wildlife Management; 20th in Forestry; 34th in the Waste to Resources Current Issue Test; and 21st in the Current Issue Oral Presentation.
The team won the Maine Envirothon Championship on June 3 at the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine Outdoor Education Center in Augusta The 2022 Current Issue was “Waste to Resources” and required students to learn about many different types of human generated waste and how to manage them in an environmentally responsible way. The competition consists of outdoor field tests requiring students to apply what they know about ecosystem.
Spruce Mountain Envirothon team members are sophomore Leah Burgess, junior Abrahm Geissinger, junior Owen Schwab, sophomore Brenden Veilleux, and junior Dan Wilson. The team is advised by Spruce Mountain High School teachers Ken Baker and Rob Taylor. Ann Schwab attended the event as the female chaperone.
Teams in the competition top 10 were awarded scholarships and the winning team from Lexington High School in Massachusetts was took home $15,000.
This is the 12th time Spruce Mountain has won the Maine Envirothon and gone on to compete internationally.
“The event in Ohio was extremely competitive and it was great to be back at a live event after doing it remotely last year,” Taylor said. “The level of environmental knowledge and skill I saw during the week from all the teams was amazing, especially when one considers the challenges schools and students have had to deal with for the last two and half years. The students in attendance were world class and knew their stuff.
“I was really pleased with our team. We have 2 sophomores and 3 juniors and were among the younger teams at the event,” he said.
The team met at least twice a week for four-hour sessions in June and July, and spent many hours studying on their own.
