Students on the Niles High School Envirothon team have been working since January to prepare for this moment.

Today and Friday they will be participating in the state Envirothon, an environmental education competition, at the Fort Custer Recreation Area near Battle Creek.

Eira McDaniels, the team’s adviser, said it’s not the typical educational competition, though.

“It’s not just a poster and a speech,” she said. “There are seven categories of testing and a community project.”

The students have to be prepared for written tests in agriculture, aquatic ecology, energy, forestry, soils/geology, wildlife and a current environmental issue.

The students also have to conduct a community outreach program and give a presentation about it to a panel of expert judges.

This year the team has been helping with the Niles Community Gardens project. Beth Alton, a senior on the team, said they have planted more than 5,000 vegetable and herb plants in the high school’s green house that will later be moved to the nine community gardens in Niles.

But it wasn’t as simple as planting and watering seeds. The team had to clean out and restore the greenhouse that had been overrun by a large cactus. Students put in more than 35 hours each into the community garden project.

The Envirothon team qualified for the state competition with its first place performance at regionals. The top two teams at each regional get an automatic berth to the state competition.

The Niles High School team is currently ranked second in the state. The top team at the state competition will participate in the Canon Envirothon North American Competition.