More than 300 students from an 11-county area in central North Carolina gathered at Elon on Tuesday to test their environmental knowledge.
Elon’s campus played host Tuesday to hundreds of middle and high school students from the region as they tested their knowledge of the environment as part of the N.C. Envirothon.
Students have prepared all year to compete as teams representing 11 counties in the region including Alamance, Caswell, Chatham, Guilford, Lee, Montgomery, Moore, Orange, Person, Randolph and Rockingham.
The regional competition for the N.C. Envirothon had five-member teams from a range of schools learning from experts in the fields of forestry, wildlife, soil and land use, aquatics and current environmental issues and then testing their knowledge. Morning sessions at different stations in front of Lindner Hall were followed by tests in McKinnon Hall in the afternoon.
The top teams from each regional competition will move onto the state competition to be held April 28-29 at Cedarock Park in Burlington.
The mission of the N.C. Envirothon program is to promote leadership in knowledge of natural resources by offering quality education programs in the five target areas to teachers, students and residents of North Carolina.
This competition is a partnership between conservation district associations and state, provincial and federal natural resource agencies. More than 500,000 students participate each year. The event at Elon is being hosted by the Elon University Center for Environmental Studies.
More information on the N.C. Envirothon can be found at http://www.ncenvirothon.org/.