The Boy Scouts of America are recruiting volunteers to help reforest a popular campground that was devastated by wildfire over Labor Day weekend in 2011.

Nearly half of the 5,000-acre Griffith League Scout Ranch was destroyed by the Bastrop County Complex, a monstrous wildfire that charred 32,400 acres, destroyed 1,660 homes and nearly consumed the Lost Pines Forest in Central Texas.

Now, the Scouts are joining forces with Texas A&M Forest Service to reforest the ranch with roughly 300,000 drought-hardy, loblolly pine seedlings over the next two years. The seedlings — 50,000 to be planted this year and 250,000 more next year — are being provided by the state forestry agency.

“When you take a look at the community as a whole, the Boy Scout Ranch has been there for a long time. It’s a part of the community. Generations of families have had children go through there,” Texas A&M Forest Service Central Texas Operations Department Head Jim Rooni said, noting that the ranch was the second-largest tract destroyed by the Bastrop wildfire. “That acreage is probably as entwined in that community as Bastrop State Park in terms of peoples’ attachment. One is public, one is private, but they mirror one another in importance.”

The Griffith League Scout Ranch is nestled on three square miles northeast of downtown Bastrop. Before the wildfire, the landscape was dotted with pine and hardwood trees and thick with yaupon.

From The Texas A&M Forest Service: https://texasforestservice.tamu.edu/main/article.aspx?id=17064