Nature center to open in spring

April Dozier had reason to act like a proud parent as she recently showed off the Missouri Department of Conservation's nature center at Cape Girardeau County Park North.

Dozier, who was the assistant manager for the MDC's nature center in Springfield for the past five years, in November was named the manager for Cape Girardeau's $4.75 million, 20,000-square-foot complex.

"Because I believe in what we do at the nature centers and the interactive education," she said, "it's going to be neat to be in control of the direction of what we do here."

The nature center is scheduled to open with ceremonies on May 14 and 15. The facility will be open for school groups during the day May 18 through 20 in an attempt to introduce children to the facility before the end of the school year.

Education will be a prime function of the nature center, which has several ways of presenting information on a wide range of conservation topics. The facility features a 160-seat auditorium and three classrooms, including one that has the equipment to host everything from demonstrations on cooking wild game, skinning rabits and making birdhouses. The facility also will have an education resource room with materials for schoolteachers as well as instructors of outdoor classes and a research lab that will be visible in the nature center's exhibit areas.

Dozier envisions outdoor classrooms for such topics as archery and fishing on a fishing pond at the facility.

As for the exhibit floor, among the displays are a diarama of a marsh, a beaver lodge and an aquarium. The floor also features a wall of windows to look out on the adjacent woods.

The nature center is the sixth one to be built and operated by the MDC.

"Each one is unique," Dozier said. "This one will have more cultural history as well as natural history. There will be displays of the tools Native Americans used for hunting and fishing.

"The southeast part of Missouri has some real unique habitat and resources where people hunt and fish in the area. This is a great opportunity to educate people so they know more about those resources."

The nature center will have informational resources for people who want to go beyond the museum experience and hike, camp, fish or hunt in the region.

"The whole experience is not only people and land and the connection between the two," Dozier said, "but we'll have information for people who want to be interactive and want to know where to go hunting, where to go fishing, where to go camping."

The nature center will charge no admission, drawing funds from the state's sales tax for the Department of Conservation.

It will have a staff of roughly 10 people. Dozier also hopes to have a thriving volunteer program with people of many ages participating. A room in the building has been set aside for volunteers.

"Volunteers can help at the front desk, the lab, walk the trails," Dozier said. "In Springfield, volunteers coordinated the hiking program. A volunteer program is really, really important at a facility of this size."

Dozier can attest that education takes place in places other than the classroom. She graduated from Central Missouri State with a degree in outdoor recreation and went to work for the MDC 23 years ago at the Shepherd of Hills Fish Hatchery in Branson.

"I had to learn a lot of science," she said.

She spent 18 years there before moving up the road to the nature center in Springfield.

"Springfield drew 100,000-plus per year," Dozier said. "I think we'd be very close to Springfield. At some times of the year, it might be slower. We're hoping for 80,000 to 100,000 on a regular basis.

"One of the nice things about this one is that it's been a real community effort to get it here. A lot of people in this area were interested in bringing one here, and the county commission donated the land for it.

"And the nature centers become part of the community."