Hornaday Projects and Youth Awards
The Hornaday Awards program encourages and recognizes units, Scouts, and Venturers who design, lead, and carry out conservation projects that are based on sound scientific principles and practices. The projects should contribute to sound conservation and environmental improvement in the local community, the region, or the nation. The applicant is expected to research potential projects and to choose, with guidance from a Hornaday adviser, a worthy project.
Because the badge, the bronze medal, and the silver medal are individual awards, two or more individuals cannot claim credit for the same project. However, a project may be a part of a larger conservation effort, with different applicants carrying out different aspects of the same project. Applicants are encouraged to involve their unit members in project work and demonstrate Scout leadership, thereby making their unit eligible for the unit award.
What Qualifies As a Hornaday Project?
How big a project should be and how long it should last are commonly asked questions. Collecting aluminum cans over a weekend along with many other Scouts is a fine public service, but since little learning took place and there was no lasting impact on the community, the project would not qualify for a Hornaday Medal. Similarly, a simple, one-time tree planting effort would not qualify.
However, a reforestation project in cooperation with a professional forester or park planner, learning which trees are appropriate to the area, ensuring proper spacing for best growth, following proper planting methods, and caring for the trees after planting might well qualify. Starting a community-wide recycling project and encouraging people to recycle might also qualify. Size of the project is not necessarily the important element. Rather, the results, the learning that took place, the applicant's demonstrated leadership, and the significance of the contribution to the community, park, or other lands are what count.
As to time, past recipients of the medals have indicated it takes no less than 18 months to complete the required merit badges and projects. So it's a good idea to start early in your Scouting career. You will find the Conservation Handbook, No. 33570, to be an invaluable source of ideas and assistance. It is available from your local council service center or Scout shop.
Required Projects
Applicants for the Hornaday badge must plan, lead, and carry out at least one project from one category of conservation. Bronze medal applicants must complete three significant projects in three different categories. Silver medal
applicants must complete four significant projects in four categories. Each project is to be equivalent in scope to an Eagle Scout leadership service project. One project could be a suitable Eagle Scout service project, and one could be performed on BSA property. The others must benefit a school, community, religious organization, or fulfill some other public service purpose.
The categories are listed under the project examples on page four. These categories are designed, in part, to make Hornaday Awards available to Scouts living in suburban and urban areas as well as those in rural settings, and to acknowledge the growing interest among Scouts and their leaders in actively improving the natural environment within their own communities. These categories also focus on the relationship between environmental abuses in urban centers and their impact in relatively unpopulated, sometimes distant, areas.
Project Examples
Energy Conservation
Work with adults in the chartered organization to conduct an energy audit of the home of a low-income family, preparatory to weatherizing it for energy conservation. Determine the materials needed and their costs. Help organize a workforce and, with the adults, undertake the needed improvements over several weekends. This effort should be part of the chartered organization's community outreach. Record long-term impact by analyzing utility savings.
Soil and Water Conservation
Work with local park authorities to develop and maintain trails and paths, control streambank erosion (with water bars, ripraps, grass and shrub planting), conduct a wildlife census, and "adopt" a stream.
Fish and Wildlife Management
With advice and assistance from state conservation department officials, introduce carp and catfish into algae-choked farm ponds to help reduce the algae load. Build nesting boxes and set them out for waterfowl. Plant hundreds of trees for windbreaks in at least 10 fields for wildlife habitat and to help control soil erosion. Plant native grasses for the benefit of quail and prairie chickens. Using a portable puppet theater, make presentations on fish and wildlife conservation to young children.
Forestry and Range Management
Work with a range specialist to collect, analyze, plant, and maintain trees and native grasses suitable to the local environment to control erosion and provide wildlife habitats. Record short-term and long-term impacts.
Air and Water Pollution Control
Work on a legislator's staff to draft legislation and encourage enactment of state laws that require the planting of trees along all state highway rights-of-way to assist in reducing motor-vehicle air pollution, as well as filtering silt and many toxic substances.
Resource Recovery (Recycling)
Design a survey of fellow students to discover recycling and pollution-prevention opportunities in the school. This could include activities such as recycling high-grade paper, reusing some paper products in the classroom, making use of disposable materials from the school cafeteria, and collecting glass and recyclable metal containers. Present the findings of the survey to school administrators and the school board. Achieve, as a result, the launch of an innovative school recycling program that delivers considerable dollar savings to the system with strong student, teacher, and school administrator support.
Hazardous Material Disposal and Management
Working with local environmental officials, design and organize a program in which special plastic bags are distributed by Scouts to homeowners. The homeowners are asked to bag and deposit their used household batteries at special locations operated by city hazardous waste officials for appropriate disposal. Scouts design the informational brochure and run the public-information campaign to explain the environmental problems created by household batteries. The program reduces serious discharge of pollutants by the local waste incinerator.
Invasive Species Control
Working with a land managing agency or organization, help control or eliminate exotic plant or animal species that pose a threat to native species. Educate others to recognize invasive species and to conserve and protect our native plant and animal heritage.
Other Ideas
Other good ideas for projects may be found in the publications and pamphlets of groups such as the National Audubon Society, the Izaak Walton League, the National Wildlife Federation, or governmental agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Forest Service, Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Land Management, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, state natural resource conservation agencies, and your state cooperative extension service. The best way to identify a project is to discuss the options with a Hornaday adviser.
