yknot

Is the US and international scouting community hosting WSJs on any of those sites and providing de facto political endorsement of those locations and activities by their presence? The answer is no. I'm not clear what line of argument you are attempting to follow. Is filling in of remaining US tidal flat habitat universally bad in an environmental sense? Yes. Is US scouting blatantly supporting those activities? No. Or at least I hope not. I haven't seen or heard of any US scout units participating in "Yay, we support destroying tidal habitat" service projects lately. But we did send a US contingent to Saemangeum and to a similarly problematic although smaller site in Japan in 2015.

If that's the rationalization then I would say that in this as in so many things we have come to stand for nothing. We are -- or at least were -- an outdoors related conservation minded organization.

I did not and do not support Summit for many reasons but you can't compare the two. US Scouting at least attempted some environmental remediation of an existing damaged site where the damage started more than 100 years ago and largely concluded decades ago. Also, while the environmental damage was extreme locally, it was not a site of global importance for threated and endangered species. The South Korean site was a very high profile, very controversial, and very current example of extreme environmental destruction on a global scale and is everything the conservation minded scouting community should stand against. SBR is about 15 square miles; Saemangeum is about 160 square miles of intentional devastation. The scouting community allowed itself to be used by political interests attempting to legitimize what it had done. It's why those South Korean political interests poured so much money into showcasing the site and were so infuriated and incredulous when it fell apart. What I hope this does, however, is bring about a reconsideration of how, where, and why WSJ events are held in the future. From the US side, I think we need to be more judicious about whether we send contingents to WSJ. From the international side, as the report outlines, the world scouting community needs to take more interest and ownership in the safety and I would say suitability as far as alignment with our conservation credo when selecting sites.

I don't see how anyone who is a member of any outdoor conservation organization, of which Scouting is supposedly one, could have attended that WSJ. The Saemangeum sea wall project was on many global watch lists and was fought for years. It's got to be the first time a WSJ was used to christen the destruction of a globally important environmental region.

The site never should have been selected in the first place for any kind of scouting event and it's incomprehensible that US scouting endorsed the site with its presence. The "reclaimed seabed" was a tidal estuary habitat of extreme environmental importance for migratory species in a very challenging part of the world. It was like endorsing a Jamboree on a paved over a US National Wildlife Refuge the size of the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia or something else of comparable square mileage and importance. It never should have gotten to the logistical nightmare phase because the Jamboree never should have been held there in the first place. The politics that are most to blame are within the scouting organization not in South Korea.

I can think of several that have multiple end dates based on when you register. YMCA is one. 4-H is another. Both have had significant post Covid membership increases. There are more obscure ones. The key issue though, as you note, is the dysfunctional interface. I'm not sure more testing would have been helpful unless it led to scrapping the whole back end and starting from scratch to actually buy, adapt, or professionally build a better portal.

Parents registering themselves in other youth organizations generally works extremely well. The problem is that the scouting interface is not user friendly or easy to navigate and there is little to no real support. If you make it hard for people, only the committed will persist.

That's sort of true but sort of not. Every year since the pandemic BSA has had one scheme after another that has allowed it to carry inflated numbers so that you have not always been looking at even apples to apples when looking at Dec. 31-Dec. 31 numbers. There will be some inflation of the March/April numbers because of the new renewal scheme but it will be interesting to see what they are. If they are down from the December 31 2024 number, even with the inflationary effects of rolling renewal, that would be interesting.

That's why the March/April figures have always been more accurate. There's a certain percentage of baked in bloat year to year. This year is going to be a little harder to figure out because I think with the change to rolling self renewals vs. prorated renewals, they will continue to remain on the books for, depending on what you've read and where, anywhere from 60 to 180 days. I'm thinking March/April, though, will be a truer picture.

I think actually these might be somewhat inflated. I'm hoping someone will give us a look at the numbers end of March/early April.

It would be nice to return to the days when there were at least some independent, ethical journalists and media outlets that attempted to remain objective. As far as young reporters, while traditional print media has mostly disappeared, there are other potential arenas for scouts to try. Township and county newsletters, news services, and websites; middle school and high school morning news shows; chamber of commerce, tourism, environmental and community lifestyle publications or even social media pages are all places to pitch an article or a post about a scout event or activity of note. It doesn't have to be traditional or mainstream print media.

4-H membership has grown significantly. Pre pandemic I think they were 4 million, dropped, but are now at 6 million. YMCA youth membership is up. Youth sports participation in traditionally tracked team or conventional individual sports is down but many non traditional sports have seen exponential growth in participation.

In 2019, about 2.1 million youth in BSA. In 2023, slightly less than a million. In 2019, about 1.7 million youth in GSUSA. In 2023 slightly more than a million. As of October, there are around a million girls in GSUSA and about 880,000 +/- scouts in BSA/SA.

Good news. Hopefully some kind of public private land preservation deal can be worked out. It looks like an incredible piece of property still open space in a developing area where future parkland will be greatly needed.

The way it was explained to me was that the impacts of the bankruptcy case and lawsuits will continue to affect the liability insurance market for a number of years if not decades. As individual insurers or insurer groups encounter these rolling effects, we probably shouldn't be surprised if their recommendations change and/or rates increase.