Join Our Volunteers
Consider joining our community of volunteers working together for our kids, our community and our environment.
You are expanding Welty as an essential Stateline education resource. As our staff size increases, so do our expenses. We are grateful for donors like you, whose annual gifts means we don’t pass these costs onto our program participants. Low program fees mean more people can visit Welty for nature fun and learning!
Can you help us raise $27,000 by the end of 2023? Any amount you give will be matched 2-for-1, tripling your gift!
The Welty Environmental Center offers year-round programs for all ages. Notices of activities are published here on our website, our Facebook page as well as our periodic newsletter, The Warbler, available via email or regular mail.
The center is a place where both children and adults can gain hands-on encounters with biological, physical, and chemical elements of nature. It provides a challenge to its users to relate concepts of the natural and social sciences and humanities to environmental, ecological, and related social concerns. Our programs stimulate interest in local, regional, and global environmental issues.
Internationally known as an expert on ornithology, one would have to look to John Audubon or Roger Tory Peterson to find another who has had more impact on bird study than Carl Welty.
Welty joined the Beloit College, Wisconsin, biology department in 1934. After a few years, he became disappointed in the lack of a current biology text on birds, so took on the job of research and wrote a book himself. Titled Life of Birds, it became the most widely used college textbook on ornithology in the United States and went through several revisions.
At their rural home in Turtle Township, Wisconsin, the Weltys established a wildlife refuge which was used as a learning center for students.