HISTORY

Oregon Envirothon was started in the spring of 1996 after a meeting between Dick Behm, a retired forest industry manager and organizer of Washington’s Envirothon, and Susie Kelly, director of the Northwest Center for Sustainable Resources (NCSR). As a result, Jon Yoder, secondary education coordinator for NCSR, began planning Oregon’s first Envirothon.

A committee of natural resource educators and agency personnel met in August of that year to design the competition. The committee decided that student experiences would be developed through a series of “ecostations” covering forestry, wildlife, soils and aquatics. Students would also prepare an oral presentation on an issue determined by Canon Envirothon (the national affiliate). 

The committee developed the materials for the competition by spring of 1997, including tests and scoring guides. They sent out flyers to each high school in the state and advertised the event in several publications. They also enlisted volunteers and judges and selected a site for the competition at Western Mennonite School. On May 17, 1997, Oregon held its first Envirothon competition. Five teams participated, including North Salem, Sisters, Western Mennonite, South Wasco, and Hidden Valley high schools. North Salem High School won the first Oregon Envirothon.

NCSR leadership and funding for Envirothon ended in 2001. Monte Graham of Marion County Soil and Water Conservation District (MCSWCD) took on the effort to organize Oregon Envirothon from there. Graham coordinated the 2001 and 2002 Oregon Envirothon competitions. In 2003, his colleague Diane Cheyne took over. 

To closely match the Canon Envirothon competition, Oregon Envirothon was changed from an ecostation approach to the site-specific approach of the national Envirothon and the current issue station was added. In 2004, Cheyne started a partnership with Julie Woodward of the Oregon Forest Resources Institute (OFRI) and the competition was moved to The Oregon Garden in Silverton, Oregon, where OFRI manages a demonstration forest.

In 2006, Ron Crouse, the education coordinator of MCSWCD, took over as the event coordinator. By 2009, it was clear that Oregon Envirothon needed further support to improve and expand, so Oregon Envirothon became established as a 501(c)(3) domestic nonprofit corporation and recruited a board of directors, including Crouse and Woodward. 

In 2017, OFRI took over as the sole funder and primary event coordinator of the competition.