Education

Environmental Fair 

The Big Stone Soil and Water Conservation District , along with 13 other SWCD's in southwestern Minnesota, is helping to sponsor the Annual Environmental Fair for sixth grade students from area schools, September 23rd and 24th, 2008.  The Environmental Fair provides an opportunity for students to learn about the environment, through hands-on activities, and bring about environmental awareness in using our natural resources.

The Environmental Fair is free to schools in the 14-county area, which contains the cooperating SWCD's.  This year, the fair is being held in Slayton, at the Murray County Fairgrounds.  Expected attendance should surpass 2,000.  The goal of the Southwest Minnesota Environmental Fair is to let students study natural resources in a setting that will give them the opportunity to see and touch what they are learning about.

Students from James Knoll Elementary School in Ortonville, and Bellingham sixth grade have attended past Environmental Fairs.  They will be invited again this year.

This is the seventeenth consecutive year for the fair.  Popular presenters at the event include the Minnesota Zoo, Science Museum of Minnesota, and Prairie Ecology Bus Center.  It is an expensive undertaking, but the results are well worth it.  Topics include water quality, trees, wetlands, prairie, soils and wildlife, to  name a few.

Arbor Day

Every year on the last Friday of April, in observance of Arbor Day, the Big Stone SWCD donates a tree to each of the 4th grade students in the Ortonville and Clinton schools.  In previous years, the District has been donating ash trees, but with the threat of the Emerald Ash Borer, the District has now to reconsider which tree would be best for the students.

SOIL STEWARDSHIP WEEK

For more than 50 years, the National Association of Conservation Districts has sponsored a national program to encourage Americans to focus on stewardship.  The program relies on locally-led conservation districts sharing and promoting stewardship and conservation activities.  While the program encourages good stewardship year round, Stewardship Week is officially celebrated from the last Sunday in April to the first Sunday in May.  NACD produces education materials for the Stewardship Program and makes them available to SWCD's.

Big Stone offers Soil Stewardship materials to 13 churches in Big Stone County.  Supplies are ordered and delivered by the District, free of  charge to those churches who choose to participate.