Distinguished Conservation Award
Sustainable Projects are Noteworthy
It is not about the award; it is what it represents.
The Green Crew strives to design our bigger adventures to qualify for the Distinguished Conservation Award. Green Crew leadership are members of a BSA Venture Crew and are thereby eligible to earn the Distinguished Conservation Award.
Applicants for the BSA Distinguished Conservation Service Award must plan, lead, and carry out two significant projects in two different categories. If it is suitable, one project could be the applicant’s Eagle Scout leadership service project, and one could be performed on BSA property. The others must benefit a school, community, or religious organization or fulfill some other public service purpose. Applications are reviewed and awarded through the Council’s Conservation Committee.
The requirements of a project that qualified for the distinguished Conservation Award are fantastic guidelines for designing a meaningful, impactful, and sustainable project. Projects focus not only on the immediate impact but the environmental appropriateness for the local ecology, the engagement of the community, and the sustainability of the effort. The Green Crew does not do DCA qualifying projects to earn awards because of what it represents. Rather, we use the DCA because it represents a well-designed, thoughtful project with significant sustainable impact.
For a project to qualify for the Distinguished Conservation Award, it must be approved by the BSA Conservation Committee before planning and implementation. All projects submitted to approval by a Green Crew member will have additionally been approved by the Crew’s youth leadership and the Izaak Walton League’s Youth Program oversight committee.
The categories are listed below. They are designed, in part, to make conservation awards available to Venture Crew members living in suburban and urban areas as well as those in rural settings and to acknowledge the growing interest among youth and adult volunteers in actively improving the natural environment within their communities. These categories also focus on the relationship between environmental abuses in urban centers and their impact in relatively unpopulated, some- times distant areas.
- Energy conservation.
- Soil and water conservation.
- Fish and wildlife management.
- Forestry and range management.
- Air and water pollution control.
- Resource recovery (recycling)
- Hazardous material disposal and management.
- Invasive species control.
