Highlights
On this page, we highlight education events throughout Idaho. These events are often duplicated, providing outdoor education for students, adults, and everyone alike! Check with your local BLM office for similar opportunities in your area.
Cub Scouts Learn Leave No Trace Principals from BLM Employees
This past year, Idaho Falls BLM employees taught Cub Scout troops about Leave No Trace principals. Leave No Trace is designed to teach everyone, young and old, about taking care of our environment by minimizing human impact to the land. Over 150 scouts participated in a workshop about the seven principles of Leave No Trace. A short verbal lesson on outdoor ethics was followed by a relay race designed to demonstrate the principles. The activity was fun for the scouts and helped them learn ways to be better stewards of the land.
A Cub Scout learns about Leave No Trace |
BLM Recreation Planner Leads Gooding High Envirothon Team to National Competition
Kids learn to innovate, design and plan unique land management strategies aimed at resolving environmetal problems
Shoshone Field Office - Idaho BLM Shoshone FO Recreation Planner David Freiberg and his wife Becky took the Gooding High School Envirothon team to the National Competition in Flagstaff, AZ during the last week of July. After a grueling week of study and testing, the team came out in 10th place out of 54 total competitors, earning $1,000 scholarships for each student, plus other gifts from Canon Corporation, Envirothon’s primary sponsor.
The Envirothon Competition consists of five study areas including wildlife, soils, aquatics, forestry and a current event. This year’s current event topic was "Recreation Impacts to Natural Resources." Students spend six days learning from experts and testing the material before they develop and deliver a major presentation to a panel of judges. In order to be invited to the national-level competition, teams must first win their state or provincial competitions.
According to Freiberg, "These kids put in so much time and effort to win the state event. For them to move on to win a scholarship at Nationals is a real victory. They learned to innovate, design and plan unique land management strategies aimed at resolving specific environmental problems while helping both people and resources."
Cottonwood FO/Oregon State University Archeological Partnership Project Presented to Public
Posters and on-site tours describe need for project, BLM management responsibilities
Cottonwood Field Office - Oregon State University, under the direction of Dr. Loren Davis, recently completed field work under a challenge cost share agreement to perform archeological excavations on American Bar, a significant site that is eroding along the Salmon River. The site dates to at least 6,700 and 8,300 years old. Additional work in 2008 recovered significant data that was within inches of eroding out of six-foot tall vertical bank created by a bulldozer in 1974. Data will be analyzed in 2009.
Archeology students learn at American Bar |
A component designed into the project was public interpretation conducted by Dr. Davis and his graduate students. Dr. Davis prepared three posters for the public and conducted on-site tours to describe the need for the project and the BLM management responsibilities. About 160 people were given this presentation over a five-week period from June 16 - July 17 in a remote area only accessible by four-wheel drive vehicles or rafts. These people represented 23 states and the District of Columbia. Three foreign countries – the United Kingdom, France and Austria – were also represented by visitors.
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