Environmental Numberplates To Save Camp

MUNCIE — Delaware County is finally getting a return on its investment in all of those specialty environmental license plates, the ones with the blue background, the yellow sun and the eagle.

The Indiana Heritage Trust project committee this week approved a $40,000 appropriation from the trust to help the Red-tail Conservancy land trust save Camp Munsee from logging or housing development.

The land trust is now just $15,000 shy of raising the $150,000 it needs to buy the 47-acre wooded property from the Girl Scouts.

Delaware County residents last year bought 833 environmental license plates, and they have bought hundreds more each year since the specialty plates started being offered in 1993. Indiana Heritage Trust receives $25 for each plate purchased.

Barry Banks, Red-tail Conservancy director, believes this is the first time trust funds have been budgeted for Delaware County.

“Before Red-tail Conservancy started walking the woods in East Central Indiana, this region was considered ecologically barren,” Banks said.

While corn and soybeans dominate much of the land in this part of the state, “We have proven to people throughout the state that some of these fragmented wildlife areas are indeed spectacular,” Banks said.

His organization also has saved other woods, wetlands and natural areas in East Central Indiana.

Founded in 1936, Camp Munsee, on the northwest side of Prairie Creek Reservoir, is one of four camps being sold by the Girl Scouts of Central Indiana, which can no longer afford to maintain the camps’ buildings safely.

Tom Swinford, an ecologist at the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, has called Camp Munsee a “biological hot spot” with high value as a wetland, forest and wildlife conservation area, “especially in the context of East Central Indiana, where natural land conservation is far under-represented.”