MUSKINGUM, Ohio  – From kayaking and archery to identifying fossils and learning how to monitor stream quality, an Ohio summer camp is teaching kids about exploring the outdoors. 

Camp Canopy attracts students from across Ohio and the Midwest. It’s the perfect mix of forestry, wildlife and adventure.

With Camp Canopy, attendees get to experience the great outdoors in the woods of Ohio FFA Camp Muskingum. Campers will learn hands-on forestry activities and technologies. Campers will learn what it takes to work as a biologist, natural resources officer or electrofishing technician.

Ohio FFA Camp Muskingum at Leesville Lake in Carrollton, Ohio offers the perfect outdoor setting for the adventure-seeking, nature crazed and anxious-to-learn student at Camp Canopy. This camp is open to incoming high school freshmen and graduating seniors (up to 19 years of age). This weeklong camp is held the second week in June.

 “We encourage kids to come to see if they’re interested in natural resources,” said Canopy Camp director Jeremy Scherf. “We bring in 47 different forestry and wildlife professionals from around the state to spend a week in the woods with the kids. It’s a summer residence camp for high school kids.

We give more than $5,000 in college scholarships to participants at the end of the week.”

 Several lucky campers will leave camp with college scholarships to Ohio State University’s School of Environment and Natural Resources, Hocking College’s School of Natural Resources, and Zane State College. In addition, there is often a scholarship awarded to a student to use at a natural resources school of their choice.

 To vie for the scholarships, campers must take a tests on the last day of camp over everything that was taught during the week.

 “We teach them a variety of things, such as how to measure the volume of a tree, how to identify 20 different species of trees, forest management, wildlife management and a lot of other things,” Scherf said.

 While the students engage in a variety of subjects, they also focus on leadership skills and team building.

 “Even if you don’t decide to go into forestry or natural resources, after this camp you can still gain experience in leadership skills and team building,” said former camp participant Michael Bell.

 “The beauty of this camp is you can come here as a freshman and by your senior year it will help you decide which college to go to and what degree to go after,” said Alyx Flott, Camp Canopy counselor.

 The camp began in 1950 and was formerly known as Ohio Forestry & Conservation Camp. Since its inception, the camp has hosted more than 10,000 campers.

 The Ohio Forestry Association Foundation is the nonprofit entity that supports Camp Canopy. The cost to participate is $450 per camper, but sponsorships may be available to help offset costs to attend.

 This year’s camp is slated for June 9-14. Registration is open to students who are entering ninth grade through graduating high school seniors.

 “We are excited to teach our campers forestry and wildlife management tools like chainsaw safety and electrofishing this year,” said Marne Titchenell, wildlife program director for OSU Extension and camp co-director. “Wildlife biologist use electrofishing as a sampling method to study fish populations, and chainsaw safety is a critical skill for forest management.”

 Titchenell, who has been involved in the camp for 10 years, said campers will also explore forestry and wildlife topics like Ohio tree identification, geology, reptiles and forest products. Titchenell says she enjoys seeing the kids blossom.

 “It’s funny, at the beginning of the week, they’re very quiet, and at the end of the week, you start to see that interaction where they’re more comfortable with one another,” Titchenell said.

 Titchenell said Camp Canopy is the place where nurture and nature find the perfect balance.

 “We had actually two students who were at camp for multiple years,” she said. “They actually won one of the scholarships that we give out at the end of the camp and they attended Ohio State University’s School of Environment and Natural Resources, and I got to see them in the halls, attending classes and doing their thing. And now, they’re off in the natural resources field, starting their careers out. It’s great so see. The just kept going.”

 “If you come to Camp Canopy, you care about the outside, so these kids come to me with questions that your normal field trip child probably wouldn’t say because they are already super interested in the outdoors,” said Marissa Lautzenheiser, the program director with Rural Action and a former class instructor at Camp Canopy.

 Lautzenheiser teaches a session on monitoring stream quality.

 “You could take a 2-year-old or you could take a 100-year-old, everyone is going to enjoy putting on a pair of boots and stomping around in the creek,” she said.

“They can see that people like me and all my peers, we get paid to do work that we love and you can go to school here, you can learn about the fish and the ecosystems right here in Ohio, and then you can kinds perpetually do that as a career,” Lautzenheiser said.

 For more information about Camp Canopy go to campcanopy.com.