Blue Lake Township Ecological Impact Assessment

The oldest continuously operating Boy Scout camp in the United States was located in Muskegon County and is owned by the Chicago Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America. The Owasippe Scout Reservation contains one of the largest and least disturbed tracts of oak-pine forest and savanna in Michigan, and numerous rare species have been documented on the site. Due to declining revenues, the Council agreed to sell the property to a local developer, pending Township approval of a rezoning request. Faced with a request to rezone the entire property from Forest Recreation-Institutional to various densities of single-family residential use, the Township engaged ASTI to evaluate the potential ecological impact.

ASTI ecologists reviewed existing information about the property, mapped forest, wetland, prairie, and savanna habitat types across the 4,765-acre site, and assessed each for its potential to support federally and state-listed threatened and endangered plant and animal species. ASTI also modeled expected stormwater pollutant loads under both existing conditions and the proposed rezoning scenario. ASTI staff served as expert witnesses, successfully defending the analyses and supporting the Township’s planning decisions.