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Connections with the Natural World in Action

One of the Oregon Coast’s most beloved summer camps gets a facelift, ensuring many more summers of life-changing adventures.

Camp Kiwanilong is a place where kids still jump into lakes, take archery lessons, sing around the campfire and come home with nicknames like “Roadrunner” and “Quack.”

Summer after summer, kids return to “Camp K” to experience adventure, friendship and a strong sense of belonging—all in a rustic, natural setting. 

Located southwest of Astoria, Camp Kuwonilong is nestled on 270 acres between Long Lake and a wooded area bordering the mighty Pacific Ocean.

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Linn-Benton Salmon Watch Succeeds at Educating Local Area Students

Sweet Home, OR | September 30, 2015 – A group of students from Timber Ridge School in Albany stands gathered around an outdoor laboratory temporarily setup along the banks of the South Santiam river. They watch and listen to their leaders for the day, volunteers from OSU and the City of Albany, as they lead the wide-eyed group through testing water samples for dissolved oxygen, temperature, pH, and turbidity. Minutes later they are discussing how these parameters are linked to conditions in the watershed and how they affect the aquatic habitat including the health of...

Outdoor school is a rite of passage for Crook County sixth graders, who spend five days in fellowship with nature and their new camp ‘family.’

It’s a five mile hike around gorgeous Suttle Lake in central Oregon—quite a trek for the sixth graders from the Crook County School District.

But it’s all fun at outdoor school. With Bingo cards in hand, the students chart different plan species they find. They spot a bald eagle, then another, and a dramatic chase plays out before them. Even a rotten log comes to life with a careful eye.

For 57 years, the Crook County outdoor school has returned to this same location, the Suttle Lake Camp, to...

A workshop empowers teachers to bring nature writing to their classrooms, resulting in students getting published in an established anthology

Not many second graders can say they’re published authors. But thanks to a Nature Writing Workshop at the Straub Environmental Center in 2014, a large group of Salem-area youngsters can boast just that.

For more than a decade, the Straub Environmental Center (SEC) has been a leader in environmental education in the Mid-Willamette Valley. It provides teachers with resources for environmental literacy, holds family nature nights, and leads outdoor retreats and summer day camps, among other programs.

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