Stokes Nature Center struggles to attract visitors

Stokes Nature Center struggles to attract visitors

By Claire Hubbard

Events at Stokes Nature Center are continually being cancelled due to a lack of participants.

According to David Lincoln, a recreation management major who will be interning at Stokes Nature Center this summer, the biggest issue is there is a major lack of advertising. Stokes is not getting enough sign ups because people are unaware of current events.

“Stokes can only afford to employee two full-time employees,” Lincoln said. “This leaves nobody there to advertise. The two employees are so busy doing all the other things they don’t have time to advertise.”

Haley Turner, also a recreation management major who works with Stokes, said most people don’t even know Logan has a nature center.

“When I tell people about ongoing events at Stokes, a lot of the time people will say, ‘Wait, what? We have a nature center?’” Turner said.

Some events have been retired altogether due to weak participation. One event that is being cancelled is the routine Monday night Nature Night activity.

“We’ve had a very weak attendance for the past year,” said Ru Mahoney, the executive director at Stokes Nature Center. “It was a tremendous commitment for our staff to plan and prepare for, only to have one or two families come in.”

Erin Anzalone, the new director of education, is going to use her first year on the job to evaluate their programming system.

“I am going to drop what is not worth our time or budget and create new events that will appeal to more people,” Anzalone said.

Lincoln also hopes to change the fate of Stokes Nature Center as he interns this summer. 

“I am going to take over social media advertising,” Lincoln said. “I can completely redo it all for free. Sites like Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and Twitter are all very popular and I think a lot of people will notice.”