Conservation

Life Rank

Eight requirements, two six-month clocks that run side by side rather than end to end, three hours of service that have to be conservation-related, and the only other place in the whole rank ladder that asks a Scout to teach.

Scouts BSA Ranks Boards of Review Conservation Merit Badges Rank Requirements Service Project Teaching

50-Miler Award

A group award for at least 50 consecutive miles on a trail or waterway, over at least five consecutive days, without motors. The group plans the trip, does at least 10 hours of work improving the trail or area along the way, and the unit or tour leader files the application with the council.

Awards and Recognitions Awards Conservation Outdoors Requirements

National Outdoor Badge for Conservation

First Class (or the Sea Scout or Venturing equivalent), safe use of five of ten conservation tools, Environmental Science or Sustainability, Soil and Water Conservation, and one of Fish and Wildlife Management, Forestry or Mammal Study, then 25 hours of conservation work in Scouting.

National Outdoor Awards Awards Conservation Outdoors Requirements

Paul Bunyan Award

The step beyond the Totin' Chip: know the hazards and first aid for woods tools, earn the Totin' Chip and help someone else earn it, learn nine tools and use four, then spend at least two supervised hours on a conservation project with them.

Awards and Recognitions Awards Conservation Outdoors Requirements Safety Teaching

Distinguished Conservation Service Award

Scouting's highest youth conservation award, which replaced the Hornaday Awards in 2020. For Scouts BSA: First Class, five conservation merit badges and two more from a list of sixteen, two significant conservation projects in two categories with an adviser's approval, and a board of review by the council conservation committee.

Awards and Recognitions Awards Conservation Outdoors Requirements

Soil and Water Conservation Merit Badge

Seven requirements. Six are explanations with things to make among them: pictures or drawings of erosion and erosion control, two watersheds outlined on a contour map, drawings of the hydrologic cycle and of waste treatment, and a demonstration of water in soil. Requirement 7 is any two of six projects: a trip and report, planting 100 trees, bushes or vines, seeding a fifth of an acre, a soil survey, a list of problem places, or a project your counselor approves.

Elective Merit Badges Conservation Merit Badges Requirements STEM

Wildland Fire Management Merit Badge

Eleven requirements, most of them discussions. Three take arranging: a demonstration with three wildland fire hand tools, a choice of five ways to take action that each need a place or a person, and a suppression-tactics exercise that reuses the diagram from requirement 5(c).

Elective Merit Badges Conservation Merit Badges Outdoors Requirements Safety

Pulp and Paper Merit Badge

Eight requirements. Most are explanations about paper and the industry that makes it. Three parts are hands-on: make a sheet of paper by hand (4), list 15 pulp or paper products in your home and share examples of 10 (6), and ONE visit or research project (7), done with your parent or guardian's and your counselor's approval. Requirement 8 is three papermaking careers, one looked into.

Elective Merit Badges Conservation Merit Badges Requirements STEM

Reptile and Amphibian Study Merit Badge

Ten requirements, and the one that decides the shape of the badge is requirement 8: a month with an animal in your own custody, or three months of weekly visits to one in somebody else's. The prohibitions that govern it (no venomous reptiles, no protected species, no collecting in most parks) are in a standing note above the requirements rather than in any numbered one.

Elective Merit Badges Animals Conservation Merit Badges Outdoors Requirements

Insect Study Merit Badge

Nine requirements. The long parts are raising an insect from larva to adult (3(b)) and observing 20 live species from at least four orders (4(b)), which then become a scrapbook (4(c)) and a choice of eight species and their roles (4(d)). Requirement 5(b) is an ant colony or a bee hive, and 9 is a career. The rest are safety with ants and bees, anatomy, ecology, insects and people, and conservation.

Elective Merit Badges Animals Conservation Merit Badges Outdoors Requirements

Mammal Study Merit Badge

Seven requirements, two of which are choices where the routes are nothing like equal: requirement 3 is 6 hours in the field, 15 hours across five days, or no field time at all, and requirement 4 offers seven routes from a book report to making study skins. Requirement 4(c) points back at requirement 3(c) by number, and requirement 5 is a project a counselor has to agree before it starts.

Elective Merit Badges Animals Conservation Merit Badges Outdoors Requirements

Fishing Merit Badge

Ten requirements, and only one of them depends on a fish co-operating. Requirement 9 is "catch one fish", and requirement 10 deliberately does not wait on it, because it provides its own route for a Scout who cannot catch one. The arrow the numbering invites is the arrow that is wrong.

Elective Merit Badges Conservation Merit Badges Outdoors Requirements

Fly Fishing Merit Badge

Eleven requirements with a rigging chain running through them: balance an outfit, tie the five knots that assemble it, cast it 30 feet, catch a fish on it. Requirement 4 hides the badge's one real lead time, tie at least two flies, in its final sentence, and requirement 11 deliberately does not wait on catching anything.

Elective Merit Badges Conservation Merit Badges Outdoors Requirements

Gardening Merit Badge

Nine requirements, two of which are seasons rather than tasks: requirement 2 grows twelve plants through harvest and flowering, and requirement 8 is ninety days on five of its six routes with the sixth needing somebody else's beehive. The two overlap on the calendar, the germination test at requirement 4 belongs before the sowing at requirement 2, and none of that is stated anywhere on the badge.

Elective Merit Badges Conservation Health Merit Badges Outdoors Requirements

Geology Merit Badge

Requirement 5(b) asks how you practiced Leave No Trace WHILE doing the badge, so requirement 5(a) belongs before the fieldwork, not after it. And two of the four options cannot be started until your counselor hands you maps or data points.

Elective Merit Badges Conservation Merit Badges Requirements

Bird Study Merit Badge

Thirteen requirements. The long one is requirement 5: 20 wild species observed and identified, each in a field notebook, and requirement 7 then asks for five of those same 20 by song alone. Start early. Requirements 8, 9 and 13 are choices, and two routes in 8 need a club or a banding program.

Elective Merit Badges Animals Conservation Merit Badges Outdoors Requirements

Animal Science Merit Badge

Six options in requirement 6, and three of them hide an inner choice whose first branch is months of raising livestock: a lamb, a feeder pig, five chickens, or an egg flock for five months. Every one has an afternoon-long alternative. Also carries a cross-reference to "the four breeds of horses" that requirement 1 does not produce.

Elective Merit Badges Conservation Merit Badges Requirements