Posted on 01/29/2009 11:16:13 AM PST by EveningStar
For nearly a century, the Boy Scouts have worn a self-adorned badge as campsite conservationists and good stewards of the land.
"The Boy Scouts were green before it was cool to be green," said the organization's national spokesman, Deron Smith.
But for decades, local Boy Scouts of America administrations across the country have clearcut or otherwise conducted high-impact logging on tens of thousands of acres of forestland, often for the love of a different kind of green: cash.
A Hearst Newspapers investigation has found dozens of cases over the past 20 years of local Boy Scout councils logging or selling prime woodlands to big timber interests, developers or others, turning quick money and often doing so instead of seeking ways to preserve such lands.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattlepi.nwsource.com ...
Gonna have to read through this one. My bet pre-reading is that the “clear cutting” was for camps and instead of scrapping the lumber they sold what didn’t get used to make cabins and such.
Newspapers kill millions of trees. Fortunately the NY Times and this Seattle lib paper will be dead soon.
I bet 10 bucks that everyone involved in this ‘investigation’ has at one point in their life lived in a wood house, opened a hardwood cabinet, or written on a sheet of paper.
I don’t accept the premise that logging is EVIL. So the scouts are harvesting a resource on their lands...not alot different than a farmer growing corn.
Yea, bunch of homos piling on.
This does not even make sense. I was in the Boy Scouts a few years and never heard of cutting down forests or other such things. Yes we did burn a few sticks here and there but that is about the extent. I think this is all lies by a media that does not like the boy scouts.
What many of these screaming, rabid environmentalist fail to realize is that a forest needs to be managed. Unregulated growth of a forest will eventually diminish the natural ecosystem in a forest and result in drastically reduced biodiversity.
What is more, a forest that is left wild will eventually burn; and burn dramatically and uncontrollably. Forests must be managed either by controlled burning or logging in order to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildland fire and ensure a diverse forest ecosystem, otherwise your precious natural ecosystem is going to be turned to ash and require decades or centuries to recover.
I think most liberals that are opposed to logging have never set foot in a forest, or never stopped to take note of the ecosystem therein as they wandered through what they thought must be some eco-friendly liberal amusement park.
Glad to see a lot aren’t buying this breathless journalistic hit piece. I have some perspective from an experience a couple decades ago: I was working in the legal department of a large private university. We were getting a lot of donations of plots of land out in the middle of nowhere with no road access, no water rights, no utilities, nothing but trees or bushes and dirt. Turns out a sleazy operator was going around offering to let buyers purchase small plots which he would appraise out the wazoo in terms of minerals or other resources. He then told the buyer they should donate the plots to a nonprofit and take a huge deduction on their taxes. It was rampant enough (I’m sure more than one “appraiser/seller” was involved) that a lot of nonprofits were stuck with wondering what to do with their patchwork plots of unusable land. We began working with some of them, including the Boy Scouts, The Salvation Army, universities, charities, and churches caught up in the same predicament to swap and consolidate enough plots to create a block of land large enough to be worth something on the market. It was a long-term project and everyone got burned on it to some extent. (I know at least one of the appraisers went to jail.) So perhaps a lot of land might be in the name of the Boy Scouts but not be useful in terms of its mission except as to its ability to produce income.
Imagine a newspaper taking the Boy Scouts to task for cutting down trees. Honestly, the liberals in this nation have a disconnect with reality that has seldom been equaled or passed on this planet.
The Boy Scouts is too moral a concern to be backed by those with no morals, it focuses too much on character to be backed by organizations and people that don’t have any.
We will continue to see the party of tolerance (as if) trash decent people and organizations. Bank on it.
True, not only that but young forests absorb more CO2, than the old growth which are CO2 neutral, well at least until they burn.
once their buildings are empty, we can tear them down and
RECYCLE for scrap!! how GREEN!
LOL! The Hearst newspapers finally found something they deemed worth enough to investigate: the Boy Scouts!!What’s next? The Brownies for representing all that fat and sugar?
Yeah, stories like this make me smile thinking papers like the Seattle rag are going under.
I trust that BSA, not the communists that run the west coast newspapers. If the BSA cut trees, its for a good reason, even like selling a cash crop.
There also used to be a foresty merit badge,, as in forest products. There also was a pioneering merit badge, (building towers, bridges, etc,,out of smaller cut-down trees). Also had classes in using an axe.
Screw the anti-BSA socialist revolutionaries.
well lets see here-”renewable” is the orgasm triggering buzz word for the left (such as renewable energy):
Tree are a RENEWABLE resouce-you cut them down, use them replant more trees and then harvest that crop.
I seem to remember planting trees as a Boy Scout in the 1970’s, on area’s that had been cut. Nothing wrong with raising money through responsible harvesting and replanting.
bump for later
The comments by the readers are excellent.
The article is BS by a looooong time leftist newspaper.
The old Helix from the U district was more objective.
The fact that some leftist, anti Amerian values and anti-Boy Scouts rag says it is true does not make it true. Looks like a political attack piece to me.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.