Envirothon

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Sean Murphy, Faculty Sponsor

Canterbury participated in the Nature Coast Envirothon (Citrus, Hernando, Pasco, and Sumter counties). This year's Nature Coast Envirothon was held on March 4, 2009, at Ft. Cooper State Park in Inverness. There were 82 teams competing;  four Canterbury teams took the following places in the county and the region:

The Sinking Propagules Justin Coates Clark Gairing Christine Hammerschmidt Sarah Realbuto Annie Ritch	1st Place in county	1st Place in region*
The Auspicious Anteaters Lacy Adams Brenda Bauer Emma Brody Taylor Kreis Emily Winesett	2nd Place in county	3rd Place in region
The Baby Seal Club Aashka Dalal Chelsea Weiland Katie Wells Lizzy Wells Emory Wolf	4th Place in county	10th Place in region
WWCND Will Damonte Fabian Gomez Amit Prasad Shannon Steel David Weiland	9th Place in county	21st Place in region

 *The Sinking Propagules team took first place in both wildlife and soils. In addition, each team member received a $1,000 college scholarship that was sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times.

Envirothon and OceanBowl teams have been invited by City Councilman Wengay Newton to the next St. Petersburg City Council Meeting on April 9 for special recognition of their achievements.

This national competition tests high school students in five major disciplines of environmental science: aquatics, soils, forestry, wildlife, and current environmental issues. Students must collaborate in order to complete hands-on activities such as a dissolved oxygen test to rate the quality of the water, a pH test to determine the quality of the soil, and various compass and tree height measurements to answer a series of forestry questions. Students must also be able to identify a wide variety of local flora and fauna based on observation, dentition from skulls, bird and frog calls, animal tracks, and scat. The other part of the competition involves answering a series of multiple-choice questions that tests the students' knowledge in these five major disciplines.

Each year, the current environmental issue changes; this year's topic is "Biodiversity Loss in a Changing Climate," which focuses on the causes and effects of habitat and biodiversity loss. Students determine ways to combat this issue, such as proper land usage, wildlife management, and reducing man-made global warming.

Because four of the five members of the winning team will be attending the National OceanBowl competition in Washington, D.C., which takes place the same weekend, Canterbury's second place team, The  Auspicious Anteaters, will represent the school at this year's Florida Envirothon. This year's state competition will be held on April 25, 2009, at Hillsborough River State Park in Tampa.