Georgia Southern University’s Center for Wildlife Education and the Lamar Q Ball, Jr. Raptor Center To Open New Addition

Grand Opening Event Offers Tours and Activities For All Ages

 STATESBORO, Ga. – April 15, 2009 – Georgia Southern University’s Center for Wildlife Education and the Lamar Q Ball, Jr. Raptor Center will celebrate the Grand Opening of the Center’s Wetland Preserve with an afternoon of festivities from 3 p.m. until 7 p.m. on Saturday, April 25, 2009.  The event is free and open to the public.

The Wetland Preserve is a 12-acre expansion of the Center that includes a small pond and capture basin that houses a beaver lodge, a cypress pond that will be home to a variety of wading birds like herons and egrets, and a waterfowl pond. The Center is located on Forest Drive in the heart of the Georgia Southern University campus.

“This expansion means we now have seventeen acres which is very large when you think of a university center, especially one that sits right in the middle of campus.  I think the expansion raises not only the Center but the University to a higher level. This truly makes this a preeminent environmental center not only within the state but within the southeast,” said Center director Steve Hein.

Grand Opening events include Behind the Scene tours at 3:15 p.m. and 5:45 p.m., an Outdoor Classroom Wildlife Program at 5:00 p.m. and 6:15 p.m., and a lecture and tour of the new indoor Frog Exhibit hosted by John Jensen at 4:00 p.m. and 5:45 p.m. A Wetland Preserve Tour and Feed the Ducks activity at the waterfowl pond will take place at 3:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.  Other activities include crafts, scavenger hunts, geocaching and wetland conservation experiments in the new Outdoor Classroom.