Scouts sell camps under strain from abuse suits

Preservation groups, government officials are hopeful properties can be protected

KILLINGWORTH, Conn. — As the financially struggling Boy Scouts sell off a number of campgrounds, conservationists, government officials and others are scrambling to find ways to preserve them as open space.

A $2.6 billion proposed bankruptcy settlement designed to pay thousands of victims of child sexual abuse has added pressure to an organization beset by years of declining enrollment, and the Scouts and their local councils have been cashing in on their extensive holdings, including properties where some of the abuse took place. Developers have bought up some. Preservation groups hope others can be protected and some legislators have taken notice.

“I am emphasizing to my colleagues that there is a clear urgency here,” said U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat who thinks there may be federal funds available to buy Scout properties. “We have no time to waste.”

For over a century the Scouts and their local councils have acquired properties across the country where generations have learned to appreciate the outdoors through camping, swimming and canoeing.

In Blumenthal’s state of Connecticut, the Scouts’ Yankee Council is considering a $4.6 million offer from developers for a 252-acre property, Deer Lake, near Long Island Sound that offers camping, fishing, and hiking. The council has rejected offers from two conservation groups but is negotiating with one of them that offered a revised bid.

Sen. Blumenthal has said he’s looking into the possible use of money from the National Park Service’s Land and Water Conservation Fund to help in the purchase of the Connecticut camp and the other Boy Scout properties for sale across the nation. Individual states decide which projects to pay for with that money.

Other properties targeted for preservation include 96 acres of what was the Boy Scouts’ Camp Barton, on the west shore of Cayuga Lake in New York’s Finger Lakes region. It includes woodlands, streams, trails and a 75-foot waterfall.

“They are not making any more lakefront property,” said Fred Bonn, regional director for the Finger Lakes State Parks system. “Access to the lake is challenging, both with its topography and what is owned privately.”

Several local towns and New York state’s Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation is working with the Baden-Powell Council of the Boy Scouts to try to preserve the land. A nearby 41-acre parcel already was sold by the Scouts to private interests.

Evidence in the bankruptcy trial indicated the local councils own close to 2,000 properties that could be worth between $8 billion and $10 billion, said Timothy Kosnoff, an attorney who represents more than 12,000 claimants in the bankruptcy.