The newest Boy Scout merit badge: Clearcutting and development

The Greenwash Brigade

(Photo credit: Seattle Post-Intelligencer/Gilbert W. Arias)

The Company Line(s):

“The Boy Scouts were green before it was cool be to be green.” … “Our mission is kids, not trees.” … “We’re being good stewards of the land. You can take our word for it.” … “The outdoors is the laboratory in which Boy Scouts learn ecology and practice conservation of nature’s resources.” … “As a general principle, all public charities are bound to their fiduciary obligation to manage their assets for the benefits of their constituents.”

Boy Scout Reality Camp (just the facts sir):

1/3 of all Scouting Councils have conducted timber harvests
400 timber harvests over 20 years=millions of dollars in revenue
Intensive timber harvests and development= 34,000 acres of potential conservation learning… poof!… gone
Not welcome: gays, atheists, agnostics, United Way funding
Myopic and hateful exclusion leads to loss of revenue, leads to clearcutting forests, yet insistence that they are a good land steward.

In a searing indictment of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), whose heart and soul is connected with wholesome outdoors activities and nature-driven badges, Hearst newspapers revealed a 20 year pattern of intensive forest clearcuts, deals with developers, sloppy timber harvests (many supported by incomplete and inaccurate information about wildlife habitat, dangerously steep slopes or conducted contrary to park or state regulations) and environmental outcomes which were exacerbated by wholly insufficient monitoring and enforcement by state forest agencies.

Oh yes, and let’s not forget salaries between $100k and $300k for Council execs who were cash-strapped enough to conduct timber harvests and clearcuts.

In many cases, the logging was conducted in ways that harmed endangered salmon, other wildlife habitat, stream water quality and led to erosion, inflaming local communities and leading to legal action, protests and embarrassed Scouts.

Raising the bar on hypocrisy

You can get a Forestry Merit Badge — Scouts earn this honor when they can proficiently “describe contributions forests make to … clean water, clean air, wildlife habitat, fisheries habitat (and) threatened and endangered species,” among other requirements. BSA can describe the contributions forest make to these ecological functions yet defend their destruction. In a 29-page response (PDF) to the newspapers which ran this story, BSA states that its conservation program’s emphasis has been developed to “create a positive commitment to improving the environment and conserving natural resources through firsthand experiences and ‘learning by doing.’”

Some would argue that the “firsthand experience” folks had in mind was land conservation, not clearcutting and developing that land. In the course of being trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent, the Boy Scouts of America managed to destroy rather than conserve land that non-profits and land trusts would have died to purchase, and I, at least, can’t think of any particular way in which these traits lend themselves to conservation. How about reverence for nature as opposed to cash?

This story caught the attention of wonderfully naughty Steven Colbert who just announced the Boy Scouts as Alpha Dog of the Week.:

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Alpha Dog of the Week - Boy Scouts of America

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Funny Political News

Christian Bale Parody
Joke of the Day

Watch it and then reconsider the integrity of the brand behind your now dusty badges issued by Voldemort.

February 10, 2009 by Heidi Siegelbaum
5 comments

tags: Boy Scouts forest management

Comments (5)

Jim | Respond
April 6, 2009 3:03 PM PT

You are saying that 20 timber harvests per year (out of the many thousands of tracts of timberland that is owned by the Boy Scouts) that they are doing is so bad? I would have to say that they are extremely good stewards of their trees and the environment.

Heidi Siegelbaum | Respond
April 9, 2009 2:04 PM PT

I am saying that one third of their councils conducted salvage harvests or clearcuts to develop this land, oftentimes in contravention of applicable state forest practice regulations.

The 20 ratio to the number of tracts is not relevant. If those 20 harvests are enormous, conducted poorly, and the land not made available to land trusts while the Scouts vigorously tout their environmental virtue... that, in my opinion, does not make them extremely good stewards of their trees and the environment. It also raises the greenwashing issue which is why we wrote about them.

David Stitzhal | Respond
April 12, 2009 5:06 PM PT

In my limited, though spread out over long periods of time, experience with the Boy Scouts, Siegelbaums' comments ring true. I have found the organization to often be exclusive, intolerant, narrow and, in terms of its commitment to nature, shallow and unsophisticated. I have often found that the organization and its habits simply make me sad.

Rico Enriquez | Respond
April 16, 2009 3:16 PM PT

Thank you for bringing to my attention the issue of clearcutting by the Scouts.

It's sad that a few incidents of irresponsible decision making on the part of some Boy Scout leaders has done harm to an organization which has over 100 years of promoting conservation and environmental stuardship to young boys. As an Eagle Scout many years ago, I can attest that every single Scouting activity I've ever been involved in promotes respect for the environment. It's a deeply imbued part of Scouting culture.

I can't tell you how many times, as a Scout, I and my Scout mates have repeated the mantra: "Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints, kill nothing but time."

Unfortunately in our media bloviated society, one single negative act can destroy the reputation of hundreds of years of doing good. This is the world in which we now live.

Mari | Respond
August 21, 2009 2:26 PM PT

Here's the thing. Most private landowners don't have the luxury of 'preserving' their forests untouched just to satisfy someone else's aesthetic values. A clearcut in and of itself isn't a bad thing. How it is conducted - are best management practices to protect soil and water being followed? - is the important thing. And there are trained forestry professionals whose job it is to ensure just that. Often the challenge is to convince the cash-strapped landowner, perhaps the Boy Scout Councils in this case, to hire a professional forester to manage the land in an environmentally sound fashion, rather than going straight to a logger. (Ironically, most landowners will actually make more money by paying a professional forester to manage the forest for them, and to protect them from unsavory logging deals too!)

Try this: Logging is not deforestation. Development is. So if you can drop Facts 1 and 2 from your list (the harvesting itself isn't at issue, it's HOW the harvesting was conducted), and separate out the logged acres (because the trees will grow back there) from the development ones (pavement = true deforestation) in Fact 3, and then focus on THAT, I think it would be productive. The current greatest threat to our nation's private forest lands is NOT forestry practices, it's development.

As far as Fact 4 - yep, it's true, though it has no bearing that I can see on the forestry-related issue . . . other than the case you make in Fact 5 for the loss of other revenues due to exclusionary practices.

I hope you will consult a forestry expert next time a forest-related issue comes up! Try the Society of American Foresters or the Forest Guild for sources.

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Our hand-picked environmental professionals, each part of the Public Insight Network, are on the hunt for "greenwash" as they examine eco-friendly claims by companies, governments and other groups. They ask tough questions about the mainstreaming of green, from the perspectives of people in the trenches who are focused on these issues 24/7.

Jim Nicolow is a nationally recognized expert on sustainable design and leads the sustainability initiative for Lord, Aeck & Sargent, overseeing the incorporation of sustainable design strategies and features into the firm’s design projects. He is a LEED® Accredited Professional with extensive knowledge of the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED rating system.

Janne K. Flisrand has worked as an affordable housing and urban planning research consultant for five years, primarily supporting local non-profits. Her focus is on transit, transit-oriented design, affordable housing, and sustainability. Currently, she’s the program coordinator for Minnesota Green Communities, a program promoting affordable, healthy, sustainably built housing throughout Minnesota.

Dennis Markatos-Soriano recently completed a Master's in Public Affairs at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School. He is now launching Sustainable Energy Transition (SET) to help individuals and institutions move from dependence on oil and gas to an efficient use of renewables. Previously, he co-founded SURGE (Students United for a Responsible Global Environment), which aims to bring young progressives together across issues of environmental and social justice throughout North Carolina and beyond. In the summer of 2006, he helped to start a small green company, Greenway Pedicabs, to provide a greenhouse gas-free transportation option for people in the Triangle of North Carolina.

Heidi Siegelbaum is a principal with Calyx Sustainable Tourism and works primarily on advancing sustainable tourism practices. She also specializes in science translation, cross-border indicators with Canada, cross-disciplinary planning and environmental technical assistance to businesses. Previously, she was in-house legal counsel for EPA for industrial chemicals and biotechnology and the senior performance measure analyst with the Washington State Department of Ecology. She is on the technical advisory committee of the Seattle Culinary Academy and a long standing member of the Chefs Collaborative.

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