On Saturday, May 7, the Hays High School Environmental Club visited Cheyenne Bottoms Wetlands Center. Cheyenne Bottoms is located near Great Bend and Hoisington and is the largest wetlands in the interior United States.

This is the Environmental Club’s third trip to Cheyenne Bottoms. Typically, students learn something educational over a specific topic and then participate in hands-on activities.

This year the students learned about Black Footed Ferret’s genetics and got to set live traps and identified rodents that they found in the traps.

“My favorite part of the Cheyenne Bottoms trip was going into the marsh because it was muddy, and I kept falling,” sophomore Maddie Meis said. “And then, there was a crawfish that I got to pick up with my bare hands, but it was dead and then I got sad.”

Students said they enjoyed a wide variety of things about the trip.

“I didn’t know how to use binoculars, but when I figured out how to use them, I had a blast spotting birds,” sophomore Olivia Pince said.