The Environmental Science merit badge includes a section about endangered species (req 3.e); Troop 60’s ASPL led the Troop through his presentation about the Leatherback Turtle, which is currently endangered, describing its habitat, why it’s endangered, and the recovery efforts in practice today.

Then, he broke the Scouts into small groups and assigned each an endangered animal that had recovered from endangered status, giving each group research materials so they could prepare a 100-word presentation describing the species, its endangered status, and how its population recovered.

Each Scout then gave their informative and entertaining presentations!

Note for OA members: Saturday is the OA Service Day and crawfish boil up at Kinsey. Hope you can make it!

Caleb led the Troop through the history of environmentalism in the United States using his powerpoint slides and explained the relationship of Boy Scouts to environmental science (requirement 1).

Then, Scouts learned about air pollution and acid rain (req. 3.b.3), watching an informative video by National Geographic called “What is Acid Rain?” . After discussion, they learned about the consequences of acidic precipitation to our national monuments and other buildings in Washington, D.C. from a Discovery clip.

Finally, they talked about what large and small changes countries, communities, and individuals can make to ameliorate air pollution and plan to report back next week two things they changed in their daily lives.

What a meeting! Scouts learned about earthworm anatomy and then hypothesized about worm behavior in response to changes in their environments, specifically how they might respond to different levels of light and moisture.

Although the worms preferred the moist and dark options, the Scouts discovered that the experiment was flawed because moisture spread into the “dry” dark quadrant by the process of diffusion, which is the same process that enables worms to breathe through their skin. Fascinating!

Then, we discussed pollution, conservation, and reduce-reuse-recycle before performing an experiment on different types of packaging materials to determine which are biodegradable. After observing and handling brown paper, white paper, green inflated plastic bags, cardboard, and white plastic packaging materials, each Scout came up with a hypothesis about whether each type is biodegradable and then made an educated guess about which would degrade the most in the next week.

Each group then decided on a method to encourage the breakdown of their material (tearing, shredding, adding moisture, etc) and sealed their experiment bags until next week, when they will examine the results!

We also sang “happy birthday” to Stephen, who celebrated his 15th birthday, and had some cake. Happy birthday Stephen!