Cape Girardeau Conservation Center soon will mark 10th anniversary

Sara Turner began working at the Cape Girardeau Conservation Nature Center 10 days before it opened in 2005.

Now, celebrating its 10th anniversary, she's surrounded by changes that show the center's progress.

The Missouri Department of Conservation will celebrate the 10th year of the Cape Girardeau Conservation Nature Center on Friday and Saturday with a variety of free events.

The party will begin with a free outdoor concert by Wildheart from 7 to 8 p.m. Friday. From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, friends of the center can participate in events such as archery, canoeing, nature art, native plant gardening and wildlife identification.

Turner originally started teaching Girl Scouts at the nature center. But as time progressed, she gradually moved from teaching summer camp to full-time working with the scouts. She realized how much she enjoyed working at the center, became a naturalist and in 2009 took over as the center's manager.

Ella Price, a student at Cape Christian School uses binoculars to look for wildlife at the Cape Girardeau Conservation Nature Center during a class trip Friday. (Glenn Landberg)

"Over the past 10 years, we've obviously seen changes in staff and the people coming here," Turner said. "We've had some regulars that started in our preschool programs, and now they're in junior high, so that's an interesting thing to watch; kids grow up and go through your programs.

"We've just tried to get more involved in the community as we've grown and making people more aware of who we are and what we do."

The latest changes is staff members have dedicated time and resources to adopting a portion of the highway in front of the nature center to keep it free of litter. Also this summer, the Nature Center is offering 14- to 17 year-olds the opportunity to volunteer there.

"We have volunteers right now ranging from 18 to 84, and we ask them to put in an average of 10 hours a month," Turner said. "... A couple of the other nature centers throughout the state do that and have had lots of success with it. We've just had a lot of 14- to 17-year-olds wanting to volunteer, and we haven't been able to accommodate that in the past."

Turner said after undergoing the training, volunteers can specify the type of volunteering on which they'd like to focus. Conservation naturalists help lead programs, nature scapers help take care of the garden, ambassadors volunteer at the front desk and interact with the exhibits and trails, and animal care assistants help take care of the exhibits and animals.

Bailee Crass and Blaze Clabough, students at Cape Christian School, peer out a window at the Cape Girardeau Conservation Nature Center during a class trip Friday. (Glenn Landberg)

The center has about 30 volunteers at the center, and Turner said they have contributed 79,729 hours of service, saving the center more than $1.5 million.

The nature center's staff and volunteers have hosted about 4,950 programs and are adding more. Turner said some of the most popular programs are maple sugaring and bow making.

"Basically any that are really hands-on and focus heavily in doing something is really popular," Turner said, "especially if they have some kind of skill or object they can take home with them."

About 485,000 people have visited the nature center since it opened, and Turner believes it will continue to thrive.

"We wouldn't be here if the county commissioners and community leaders in the late '80s and early '90s hadn't pushed for a conservation nature center to be here," Turner said. "We have a really good partnership with [Cape Girardeau County], and we partner with the city of Cape and city of Jackson. ... We really do a lot of stuff in the community and for schools, and I think one of the main reasons we're successful is because we're free because of that one-eighth of 1 percent dedicated sales tax.

"Plus we also have hiking trails ... and we have a fishing pond for youths 15 and younger where they can fish for free; we even provide fishing poles and bait whenever we're open."

For more information on the Cape Girardeau Conservation Nature Center, visit mdc.mo.gov/CapeNatureCenter.

smaue@semissourian.com

388-3644

Pertinent address:

2289 County Park Dr., Cape Girardeau