EnviSci and resources
EC92@AOL.COM
Wed, 28 Apr 1999 14:04:53 EDT
You have many sources, and the Department of Agriculture is one of the best.
Soil Conservation used to be one of the agencies, however I believe it was
rolled into one agency under Ag which is now called Renewable Resources or
something similar. (Anyone from Jambo97 got the hat pin from the Soil and
Water Conservation MB Booth???)
Every state has an office for this, some more than one. Try the phone book.
If you don't find anything about Ag, Soil, or Renewable Resources in the
phone book, try the nearest state-run university (when there is not enough
demand in an area the office is often run by the local state-run university)
and ask if there is someone on campus who is working with Ag for Soil and
Water Conservation. You might have to try two or three - if you start with
one that has an agriculture program you'll probably have better odds.
You can also find, in rural areas, that there is often a local Soil and Water
Conservation Society. How they were formed or how they are related to the
feds I never asked, but apparently they have some connection because the two
worked together to run that Jambo MB Booth.
These guys are good and they do a lot for Scouting. They taught the
conservation course at PTC when it started (1993? Was I in the first class?)
which I believe now runs down at the area of the Kit Carson Home. We saw
soils, we dug a hole to see the soil layers (I challenge anyone here to guess
what it takes to get permission to dig a hole on Philmont property), they
handed out so much stuff (and had extras) that I UPSed about 20 lbs. of
materials to the council I was with at the time. Charts, Books, Diagrams,
overhead projection stuff, posters, etc.
If all of that fails, your next option is Washington D.C. There is an
Education Office within the Agency and they can provide you with a list of
things you can order for instruction purposes. Most stuff does have a cost, I
will admit up front.
Further west than me in Illinois, you can probably also contact Bureau of
Land Management (They even maintained an office at Philmont Base Camp at one
time - and may still for all I know) and Forestry (They provided part of the
conservation course, including telling us about logging practices and ways
they had helped various camps out west at N/C). And there is a student
conservation society (or something similar) that may be able to assist - for
the real name of it grab a Fieldbook and find a chapter written by the man
who writes the current BS handbook, I believe it gives the name of the group
in his bio, since he is/was a member.
And one thing to make sure youth planning a project consider - most things
are determined after effects on a total watershed are determined, so besides
types of soils you would have to determine what the proposal would do to the
nearest water source and all the property it serves.
For anything else someone would have to wait until I get to the weekend and
can locate some of the information.
Tom Petrik
