Environmental Progress - Winter 2002

Not Too Long Ago In a Galaxy Pretty Near By....

An unlikely trio of heroes make their debut on the IEPA's homepage

Have you heard the one about the fish, the worm and the redbird in a spaceship? No? Then you ought to check out Envirofun on the IEPA's homepage at www.epa.state.il.us .

The Envirofun segment of the Kids and Environmental Education part of the site has recently been redesigned with particular attention to three fearless - well, pretty fearless - champions of the Environment. These ecological experts, Captain Bluegill, Captain Redbird and Captain Earthworm, live together in a tree named TREE when they're not zipping around in their Envirocruiser seeking out the careless, the cluttering and the clueless who thoughtlessly risk the environment that the mini-but-mighty trio is sworn to protect.

In the best super-hero and super-heroine fashion, they record their ecological escapades in logs which are part of the Envirofun contents. New diaries of their dauntless derring-do will be added as the heroes find time to update them - it takes a lot of time to save the earth and keep the Envirocruiser polished too, you know.

Elsewhere on the Kids and Environmental Education pages young environmentalists can test their detection skills - and earn a downloadable badge showing they're real Enviro detectives - or demonstrate their environmental knowledge by taking the water quiz or playing "Middle Riddle."

In other sections on the education pages, teachers can find links to more ecology-oriented sites, or download the IEPA's fifth and sixth grade environmental text Environmental Pathways - Youth Investigating Pollution Issues in Illinois that supports the agency's yearly poster, poetry and prose event.

For those a bit past the fifth and sixth grade level, or perhaps those interested in becoming teachers of environment-friendly fifth and sixth graders, there is information about available internships.