Scout’s Honor: The Resource Ramble

Jeff Marion believes in Peter Pan’s motto: “Never grow up!” When he’s not teaching graduate students about outdoor recreation in Virginia Tech’s College of Natural Resources, he and his wife, Susie Marion, serve as advisors to a co-educational high adventure Boy Scout Venture Crew. Jeff Marion also serves on the local Boy Scout Council’s Conservation Committee, which has undertaken a project to discover what flora and fauna exist on the council’s scout reservation.

The project is called the Resource Ramble. Similar to a “BioBlitz,” the Resource Ramble seeks to inventory the natural and cultural resources found on the Blue Ridge Scout Reservation (BRSR). The reservation, in Pulaski County, Va., spans 17,500 acres, making it the largest expanse of land owned by a Boy Scout Council in the United States.

In mid-April 2007, biologists, geologists, archeologists, and other resource professionals ran rampant through the BRSR for an entire weekend trying to locate and identify as many species of plants and animals as they could. BioBlitzes are generally organized for this purpose in natural parks and similar areas. The Resource Ramble differs from those blitzes because it is a volunteer project being overseen by the BRSR Conservation Committee.

“The conservation committee and I appreciate and want to thank the many BioBlitz participants from several departments at Virginia Tech, as well as from other area colleges and universities,” says Marion, an adjunct professor with the Department of Forestry who has been with the university since 1989.

Jamie Roberts, a Ph.D. student in fisheries and wildlife science (FWS), left, works with FWS Professor Paul Angermeier; Erica Baugh, forestry student and a New River Valley master naturalist-in-training; and John Copeland, fisheries biologist with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, far right, with the buckets. The researchers were joined by Roberts’ and Angermeier’s daughters as they collected fish as part of the BioBlitz inventory. To get a population count on how many fish live in an area of a stream, Roberts uses a backpack electro-shocker to stun fish so they will float to the surface. The fish are later returned to the creek unharmed. Photo by Betsy Stinson.