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

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

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

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