Mountain Nature Camp:
JUNE 13-19, 2010

Nature Leaders Training School:
June 20-25, 2010

Terra Alta Mountain Camp

Founded in 1929 by A.B. Brooks, Terra Alta Mountain Camp serves as a training ground for the country’s leading naturalists. Located along Terra Alta Lake in Preston County, West Virginia, its numerous habitats are home to a wide variety of wildflowers, trees, ferns, club mosses, mammals, cold-blooded vertebrates, and invertebrates. Campers awake each morning to the songs of warblers, thrushes, kinglets and vireos, and end each day at the campfire circle under a ring of ancient white oaks.

Camping Programs

Each year educators, researchers and outdoor enthusiasts gather in this pristine mountain setting to learn from expert naturalists and each other. Our residential camping programs immerse participants in a natural environment and offer field study that can’t be equaled in any classroom.

Whether you are a novice or an expert, Terra Alta Mountain Camp introduces unique habitats, and celebrates learning, exploring, and protecting our natural world.
 

A.B. Brooks, West Virginia’s first naturalist and forester, first designed the Nature Leaders Training School in 1929. This innovative program brought educators from around the country to West Virginia to explore and learn teaching methods in a pristine setting full of rare and unusual species. This eighty year old program has furthered the education of thousands and serves as a model for environmental and science education. The proud and pioneering tradition of Nature Leaders Training School includes campers that have been discovering taxa that are undescribed and new to the state including species of fish, crayfish, fern, flower, bird, and mushroom.

Participants of the nature leadership training school will receive training in alpha taxonomy, classification, natural history, ecology, and zoology from experts in the field. Institutions currently committed include West Liberty University, Marshall University, United States Geologic Survey, and the Invertebrate Range of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh

Collecting methods specific to insects (moths, beetles, and crane flies specifically), crayfishes, fishes, amphibians and reptiles will be taught to participants. Training in the nature Leadership training school will enable participants to locate, collect, identify, and deposit understudied taxa into collections which desperately need information on Appalachian biodiversity

Teachers will be trained in proper field id and specimen preparation for key taxa including crayfishes, beetles, and moths, and given curriculum to augment collecting trips with their students for these taxa.

All specimens collected during the week or during independent collecting trips following N. L. T. S. will have the option of being deposited in either the Invertebrate Range at Carnegie Museum or the West Liberty University Astacology Collection. Collectors names will accommodate specimens in these collections for hundreds of years into the future.

After training by experts in the first two days, participants will partake in a bioblitz inventory of Dolly Sods and Coopers Rock for understudied invertebrate taxa.

Following the Bioblitz, West Virginia Department of Natural Resources Biologists will be present to notify participants of significant findings. All records will be added to the current West Virginia Department of Natural resources database for rare and endangered wildlife.

Located on the shores of Lake Terra Alta, the camp's proximity to the state's most unique and cherished natural areas allow for in-depth study of these impressive natural resources. The 18 acre base camp site includes a renovated dining hall and new shower house. Participants tent camp and travel to study sites in vans.

For registration and scholarship information contact the Schrader Center at 304.242.6855.