For the past few summers, Jim Spotts , a conservationist at OSM's Appalachian Region Coordinating Center in Pittsburgh, and Paul Behum , a hydrologist at OSM's Mid-Continent Coordinating Center in Alton, Illinois, have shared their professional skills and knowledge with Boy Scouts through the Bureau of Land Management's Mineral Outreach Program.
Part of a cooperative effort between the Department and the Boy Scouts of America, the Mineral Outreach Program encourages Interior employees to work with scouts in the outdoors. Spotts and Behum help out at Philmont, the world's largest scout ranch, which is located in northern New Mexico.
Spotts and Behum are stationed at Cypher's Mine and Baldy Town, where gold mining was important from the late 1880s through 1940. Behum helps Philmont's geologists find abandoned mines and shafts used for gold and copper mining. Spotts guides the hikers through the hard rock mine and teaches them how to pan for gold in a nearby creek.
One goal of the Mineral Outreach Program is to show the scouts how mining relates to the environment. For example, they learn that hydraulic mining directs pressurized water into floodplain stream banks to dislodge gold carried in alluvial deposits. The water causes soil erosion and pollutes streams with sediment. In addition, refining and concentrating processes can produce toxic levels of mercury and cyanide.
In panning for gold, the scouts are allowed to keep any gold they find but most soon learn that getting rich quick isn't as easy as it sounds. The scouts also discover that living conditions for miners were primitive and the work hard and dangerous. Few miners lived beyond the age of 40.