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The framers of the constitution of the Georgia Wildlife Federation in 1936 made an explicit commitment to the "intensive education of the whole public, youth and adult, in recognizing resource conservation as vital to our way of life and its preservation." Our commitment to this goal remains unwavering today. Modeled after the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) Backyard Wildlife HabitatÔ program, GWF pioneered the Schoolyard Wildlife Habitat program in 1987 with the development of the Buccaneer Wildlife Habitat Garden at Mt. Bethel Elementary School in Marietta. Then GWF board member and National Park Service Ranger, Jerry Hightower, encouraged teachers and students at Mt. Bethel to create an outdoor learning laboratory by providing the elements necessary for wildlife survival: food, water, protective cover, and areas to reproduce. The Mt. Bethel Buccaneer Wildlife Habitat Garden was officially certified by NWF in 1988. Today, Georgia leads the country in certified Schoolyard Habitats, thanks to this early GWF initiative. In 1989, GWF President Jerry McCollum challenged educators to create wildlife habitat on every school campus and to use these landscapes as outdoor classrooms across the curriculum. The 1991 DNR publication Attracting Wildlife to Your Backyard, co-authored by McCollum, states, "As we see more land cleared for commercial and residential expansion, we experience the gradual, but persistent, loss of habitat which is necessary to support the wildlife which enriches our lives." School campuses represent significant acreage of public land that can not only be used to support wildlife, but are obvious tools to carry the message of the values of resource conservation. The Governor's Council on Environmental Education, established in 1992 following the passage of the Environmental Education Act, echoed the objectives of the GWF's Schoolyard Wildlife Habitat program to "improve teacher training in environmental education, to infuse environmental studies broadly into the curriculum offered in Georgia's schools, and to initiate a small grants program to promote the development of ,outdoor classrooms' for environmental education." In 1994, Governor Zell Miller appointed McCollum as chairman of the Council. Under McCollum's leadership, the Council recommended the establishment of the Outdoor Classroom Grants Program, $100,000 to be distributed annually to 200 schools for the development of outdoor classrooms. The Council also recommended the incorporation of environmental education teaching methods into college curricula for education majors. In the first year alone, an estimated 404 schools applied for mini-grants under the program. Ten years later in 2004, the Georgia Wildlife Federation received funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the Southern Company and Georgia Power to evaluate the success of the Schoolyard Wildlife Habitat program and the sustainability of outdoor classrooms. In the first year of the three-year project entitled the Urban Conservation and Education Initiative (UCEI), GWF evaluated the status of nearly 2,000 projects funded through the Outdoor Classroom Grants Program. Following a Schoolyard Ecology and Greenspace Symposium hosted by GWF at the Alcovy Conservation Center, a set of Best Management Practices (BMPs) was developed. This guide, entitled Planning First to Make Your Outdoor Classroom Last, was based on 10 years of shared experiences of educators, volunteers, parents and students involved in environmental education in outdoor classrooms. During the second year of the UCEI, GWF revised the Georgia Schoolyard Wildlife Habitat Planning Guide, originally funded by an Urban and Community Forestry Grant from the Georgia Forestry Commission and published in 1994. The Planning Guide has been used throughout the state for 10 years, and has been a model for guides developed by other state affiliates of the National Wildlife Federation. The new version incorporates the BMPs developed in 2004. This year, GWF will complete the UCEI by enhancing the WingSong Teacher Training Center at the Alcovy Conservation Center. This will allow GWF to better serve outdoor classroom teachers who, unfortunately, still do not have access to the kind of training the 1994 Environmental Education Council felt was "the key to an environmentally literate citizenry." Despite the years of documented evidence of the value of environmental education, until it is recognized as an integral component of teacher education, environmental education will remain dependent upon the commitment of organizations like the Georgia Wildlife Federation to promote the development of sustainable outdoor classrooms and to facilitate their use in all disciplines.