Wehr Nature Center is a 220-acre environmental education facility located within Whitnall Park that opened in 1974. It offers award-winning educational programs for all ages focused on fostering environmental awareness and conservation. The center has five ecosystems - woodland, wetland, prairie, oak savanna, and lake - that serve as a living laboratory. It provides teacher training and works to get all people, including underserved groups, outside and connected with nature. The mission is to promote earth care through education and as a public information center.

1. Wehr Nature
Center
A Place for all Seasons

2. Wehr Nature Center
 The environmental
education facility for
the Milwaukee
County Parks
 220 acre Nature
Preserve in Whitnall
Park
 Opened in 1974

3. Whitnall Park
Milwaukee
County Parks

4. Where is Wehr?

5. Award Winning
Programs!
2009 Winner of the Ideal
2004 Winner of the National
Award from Keep
Feinstone Award for
Greater Milwaukee
Excellence in Environmental
Beautiful
Education

6. Charles B.
Whitnall
His vision and
philosophy shaped
today’s park system

7. Alfred Boerner
Added geographic
distribution and
waterways to vision

8. Depression and Expansion

9. Camp Whitnall (636)

10. Origins of Wehr in Conservation
Education
Dust Bowl brought need for
conservation education
Wisconsin was first state in nation to require
conservation be taught in public schools.
(1934)

11. Prairie
Restoration
1960’s

12. Wehr Nature Center established
1974

13. Wisconsin is again first
•Environmental Education is required K-12
•Teachers are required to take one credit
of EE

14. Expansion- Nature in the Parks
Created in 1981 as the outreach
program of Wehr
Cooperative effort of the UW-
Extension service and the Milwaukee
County Parks
Our traveling naturalists
Operate the Adventure Summer Day
Camps

15. Mission
…to foster environmental awareness,
knowledge, and a conservation ethic in
people of all ages…

16. Learners of all ages

17. Programs That
Help To Foster
A Sense of
Wonder

18. Programs
for Pre-K to
K-5
Students

19. Sensory based Discovery Hikes

20. Programs for
1st to 3rd
Grade

21. Programs for
4th Grade
and older
students

22. Geology
Programs for
Grades 3rd
and older

23. Astronomy
Programs in
the Starlab
for pre-k to
8th grade

24. Maple Sugar Days

25. Halloween Haunts

26. Cider Sunday

27. Reptile Day

28. Earth Day

29. Our Audience
is Everyone!

30. Mission continued…
It functions as a “living laboratory” and an
educational and public information center
to promote the care of the earth.

31. Wehr Ecosystems
• Woodland
• Wetland
• Prairie
• Oak Savanna
• Lake

34. Service Learning
Opportunities

35. Volunteers Get the Work Done

40. “NO CHILD LEFT INSIDE”
Parks are important to
people of all ages.
For nature study,
recreation, and solitude

41. Nature
helps children develop powers
of observation and creativity
and instills a sense of peace
and being at one with the
world (Crain 2001)

42. Natural
environments
stimulate social interaction
between children (Bixler,
Floyd and Hammutt 2003)

43. Children
with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
(ADHD) are better able to concentrate after
contact with nature (Taylor 2001)

45. Professional
Development
 College Credit Courses Offered Through UW-
Milwaukee and UW- Whitewater
 Courses focusing on teaching science with live
animals
 Workshops in Project Wild, Growing Up Wild, PLT,
Project Wet, Flying Wild and Great Lakes in My
World

48. Future Challenges
Reaching underserved audiences
Forming new partnerships
Provide scholarships
New delivery methods to accommodate
increased class sizes

49. Getting everyone
outside !!!!

50. Wehr Nature
Center
A place for all
seasons

52. Our Project!!!

57. “In the end, our
society will be
defined not only by
what we create, but
what we refuse to
destroy”
-John Sawhill