2024 Kansas Envirothon Winners Announced

St. John's Catholic School, Beloit, Mitchell County won the 2024 Kansas Envirothon competition.  According the 2024 Envirothon committee chair Chalee Braun; the competition has been held since 1992, has not had a winning team from Mitchell County before.  The committee was very exciting to add another county to the list of winners."  

Ten teams from across the state traveled to Camp Wood YMCA Camp at Elmdale in Chase County on April 24 for the 2024 Kansas Envirothon.  Teams from Manhattan, Holton, Mission Valley, Olathe North, Coffeyville, Jefferson County North, Rock Creek, Jayhawk Linn, Uniontown and St John's Catholic participated in the event. Braun explained that "the Envirothon Program is a hands-on environmental problem-solving contest for high school students focusing on seven natural resource areas."  Envirothon also serves as an introuduction to careers in natural resource conservation for students who participate in the program.     

Teams heard from environmental professionals with Kansas Department of Wildlife & Parks, the Kansas Forest Service, Kansas Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Kansas Association of Conservation Districts.  These volunteers gave short presentations focused on aquatic ecology, forestry, rangeland, soils, and wildlife.  Students were also asked to prepare an oral presenation on a given scenario focused on wind energy.  After the presenteations the teams then rotated back through the stations and completed a test on the topics.  Event winners were determined by their test and presenation scores in each category.  Prior to the state event teams were required to participate in one of four regional competitions held at Ellsworth, Red Rock, Council Grove and Ft Scott earlier in April.  No minimum scores were required at the regional events to advance to the state competion.

First place teams at the April 24 State Event in each category were:

• St John's Aquatics/Ecology
• Holton Current Issue - "Renewable Energy For A Sustainable Future"
• Manhattan Forestry
• Manhattan Oral Presentation
• St John's Rangeland
• Manhattan Soils and Land Use
• St John's Wildlife 
  
  a complete list of results and photos are available on the Kansas Envirothon webpage at https://www.kacd.net/envirothon