Posted on September 3, 2012
In a year of the just-completed Olympic Games, 13-year-old Kelly Young is closing in on a Silver.
A Girl Scout since kindergarten, the Lower Makefield teen is in line for Scouting’s second highest honor — the Silver Award — for leadership and community involvement.
She released scores of monarch butterflies this summer at the Silver Lake Nature Center in Bristol Township as part of a project she designed to help sustain the threatened species.
The Girl Scout Cadette had to search for a meaningful project to the community as part of her reach for the silver. Her love of butterflies inspired the idea of releasing the colorful insects as part of summer camp at the nature center. Jenn Bilger, coordinator of volunteers at the center, thought it was a great idea.
As Kelly put it about her interest in science, “It just felt natural to pick this project.”
With the backing of the Girl Scouts’ regional council, she formed a team of girls — some scouts and some not, as required by Girl Scouts — and waited for painted lady monarch caterpillars to arrive in the mail.
To her disappointment, they all died within the first few days.
With additional caterpillars on the way, Kelly trekked to the Delaware Canal to pick milkweed leaves with monarch caterpillar eggs on them. Eight eggs were collected. None survived.
The mail finally brought live caterpillars, settled into a salad container full of milkweed leaves. Survivors at last.
To read more go to: http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/local/courier_times_news/kelly-s-quest-for-the-silver/article_da569d45-fa53-51b7-bf68-e8273af26bc1.html?mode=story
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