Boy Scouts like to boast that they were green long before it was cool to be green. But it turns out that the 100-year-old organization likes another kind of green, too: cash. According to a Hearst Newspapers investigation, the Boy Scouts of America have clear-cut or otherwise conducted high-impact logging on tens of thousands of acres of prime, protected forests over the past two decades. In some cases, the land was supposed to be preserved as campgrounds and hiking trails, but local officials decided to sell it to big timber instead. “In public, they say they want to teach kids about saving the environment,” said Jane Childers, a longtime Scouting volunteer in Washington who has fought against Scouts’ logging. “But in reality, it’s all about the money.”
Seattle Post-Intelligencer