Nature Merit Badge

What each of the eight fields actually costs

Requirement 4 is "Do ALL the requirements in FIVE of the following fields". The eight headings look interchangeable. They are not.

Six of the eight are a day of looking and a bit of tidying up afterwards. Two are calendars, and both of them hide the clock two levels down.

Birds, 4(a)(2): make and set out a birdhouse OR a feeding station OR a birdbath. List what birds used it during a period of one month. The month starts when the box goes up, so the making has to happen first.

Insects and Spiders, 4(d)(2) offers four ways through, and they are not the same size: hatch an insect from a pupa or cocoon, hatch adults from nymphs, keep larvae until they pupate, or keep a colony of ants or bees through one season. Three of those are weeks. The fourth is a season.

If you want the badge finished quickly, the five fields to look at first are Mammals, Reptiles and Amphibians, Fish, Mollusks and Crustaceans, Plants, and Soils and Rocks: any five of those six state no waiting period at all.

The rules on collecting are not in any numbered requirement

Above requirement 1, unnumbered, the badge page carries a standing note. It is easy to scroll past and it governs most of the badge.

• Collect sparingly, only what you need, and do not harm the surrounding environment.
• Get permission from the land manager before taking any samples.
• Know and follow local collection laws. Your state may require a licence for certain species.
• Under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, and under state law, some plants and animals are protected. Do not collect protected species.
• Collecting is prohibited in most National and State Parks.
• Consider buying rock, mineral and fossil specimens instead, or using pictures and sketches, which the note says may suffice.
• In most cases specimens should be returned to the wild where they were caught once the requirement has been met. Ask your counselor where that would not be appropriate. Six of the eight fields ask you to collect, mount, cast or keep something alive. Read this before choosing your five, not after.

Requirement 5 is about work you have already done

Explain how you have followed the Leave No Trace Seven Principles and the Outdoor Code while in natural areas during field observation, specimen collection, and identification.

That is requirement 4, in the past tense. It is numbered after requirement 4 and it asks about requirement 4.

You cannot answer it by reading up afterwards, because it does not ask what the principles are. It asks what you did. A Scout who collects for five fields and then turns to requirement 5 has to report honestly on choices already made.

Read the Leave No Trace Seven Principles and the Outdoor Code before you start requirement 4. It costs an evening and it is the difference between answering this requirement and explaining it away.

The choice inside the choice

The Plants field has a fork of its own. 4(g)(1) is identifying 15 wild species in the field, which everybody choosing Plants does. Then 4(g)(2) asks for one of:

The photograph route takes nothing out of the ground, which matters given the standing note above. If you are working in a National or State Park, or anywhere the land manager has said no, it is the route that still works.

This plan only asks you which one you want if you have chosen Plants as one of your five fields. Answer it without choosing Plants and nothing happens.

What this page is

The Nature merit badge, drawn so that the cost of each of the eight fields is visible at the point where you choose five of them. It is not a copy of the requirements and it identifies nothing for you: each step is a short label with a link to the official requirements, which are what actually governs and which change from year to year.