Donated scout land often ends up as cash cow (Attack on Boy Scouts)

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | Saturday, January 31, 2009 | Lewis Kamb

[Navy Patriot]

It's been 62 years since conservationist Virgil McCroskey gave the Boy Scouts 400 acres of timberland near this village in Idaho's panhandle, with big ideas for a big new camp.

But don't expect any pup tents or even the faintest whiff of smoke from Camp McCroskey these days.

Rarely used for camping, the land instead has become a moneymaker for the Inland Northwest Council of Boy Scouts. Over the past 35 years, the council has repeatedly logged the property, collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some of the money helped pay the mortgage on council headquarters in far-off Spokane, a former council board member says.

Never mind that McCroskey specified how the scouts should use the land when he deeded it in 1947: "for camp and recreational purposes, the site to be known as Virgil Talmadge McCroskey Camp."

Council officials interpret McCroskey's deed to mean they can log the land, so long as revenues are spent on anything related to "recreational purposes."

[RedMonqey]

“Note that i said sone properly.”

Yes I understand but “properly" has different meaning to different people.

If only the companies here would have done an checkerboard type pattern, and allowing for riparian protection zones, I'd have no problem with them harvesting mature trees.

And amazingly, forests do regenerate. Most of the forests visitors see in picturesque settings in Tennessee are not “virgin”. Even the state parkland have been stripped by iron and railroad companies that once flourished here in the 1880's.

[gitmo]

Noprawb.