LANDER -- Since Rainbow Family participants have chosen to stay put at Big Sandy in Wyoming's Wind River Mountains, leaders with the Boy Scouts of America have decided to alter plans for a major service project that had been scheduled to take place in the same general area.

Leaders with the Boy Scouts' Order of the Arrow have decided to cancel a long-planned forest restoration project near Dutch Joe Guard Station in the Wind Rivers, said Mary Cernicek, spokeswoman with the Bridger-Teton National Forest.

The U.S. Forest Service was scrambling Monday to come up with a similar project in a different location in the Bridger-Teton, to serve as a substitute for the Scouts when they come July 26 through Aug. 2.

''We're heartbroken, but we're committed to giving the Boy Scouts a good experience and providing them with the education and leadership skills they're seeking,'' Cernicek said.

About 1,000 Scouts from throughout the United States are scheduled to come to the Cowboy State in the latter half of July as part of a five-week project in five different national forests -- the largest national service project for the Boy Scouts since World War II, according to Ed Stewart, spokesman Boy Scouts of America in Dallas.

The Order of the Arrow, which is the Boy Scouts' national honor society, anticipates 5,000 or so participants will provide more than a combined 250,000 hours of service this summer helping to restore portions of national forests in Missouri, Utah, Virginia, California and Wyoming, according Stewart.

''The Scouts have been committed for a long time with this particular project,'' Stewart said. ''Hundreds of these Scouts are raring to go. They're on their way to Virginia now, and that'll be forest number three. These are teenagers who can answer, 'What did you do this summer?' with the response that they went to five locations throughout the country and helped restore some national (forests).''

Representatives of the Bridger-Teton and the Scouts were scheduled to meet via teleconference late Monday to discuss their options, Cernicek said before the meeting.

''They'll still be doing a project in the Bridger-Teton, just not at Dutch Joe,'' she said. ''There will still be about 1,000 Scouts -- 700 on Teton Pass, and 150 at Goosewing Guard Station near the Gros Ventre Wilderness boundary.''

The Scouts will construct about 8,000 feet of trail on Teton Pass, and will remove a 10-foot-high exclusion fence at Goosewing. They had planned to remove about a quarter mile of wooden and sheep wire fence near Dutch Joe Guard Station, as well.

The Rainbow Family has chosen that same general area for its annual national Rainbow Gathering of Living Light, a counterculture celebration of peace, love and a gentle existence.

Last week Mark Rey, the federal undersecretary who oversees the U.S. Forest Service, came to Pinedale from Washington, D.C., to meet with Rainbow Family participants and urge them to move their gathering to a different location so it wouldn't conflict with the Boy Scouts' project.

Although the Rainbow event reaches its peak attendance July 4, and a mass exodus generally ensues the following day, all parties have agreed that a Rainbow cleanup crew will still be hard at work by the time the Boy Scouts are scheduled to begin their project at the end of July.

The Rainbows who were already on site conferred about Rey's request, but decided it was already too late to shut down and clean up the Dutch Joe area, and choose another location to then reconstruct kitchens, latrines and water supplies before a potential 25,000 people arrived.

Whose fault?

Sue Bradford of Missoula, Mont., who has been attending Rainbow gatherings since 1992, said Rainbow participants notified the Forest Service of the location they'd decided on, and were not told it was a ''bad'' location until several days later, after it was already too late.

''I would hate to see the Boy Scouts have to move, but at this stage in the game the gathering starts to take on a life of its own,'' Bradford said. ''I used to be an Explorer Scout and a Girl Scout. A lot of people at the gathering were Boy Scouts. I think a lot of people there would have shared these concerns, if only they'd known sooner.''

There are already an estimated 1,100 campers set up in the area, and by the time the federal agency notified the Rainbow Family of the conflict, the group had already laid a mile of water pipe, she said. To start over would set the effort back at least 10 days, and the new site would be ill-prepared to handle the impacts of the sudden 10,000 to 20,000 participants expected just before July 4.

''I would expect that probably a majority of people out there would not have wanted to dislocate the Boy Scouts,'' she said.

Garrick Beck of Santa Fe, N.M., who has attended almost all of the Rainbow gatherings since 1972, took part in several conference calls among the Forest Service, the Boy Scouts of America and the Rainbows during the past week, he said.

He said he's one of many Rainbow participants who were in favor of changing the location once they heard of the Boy Scout conflict, but he wasn't on site when the decision was made to stay.

''It's a mess, and it's unfortunate, and there's plenty of blame to go around,'' Beck said. ''But this never would have happened, or could have happened, if the Forest Service at the very beginning had said, 'No, this is not a workable site.'"

It wasn't until after more than 200 people had gathered at the site and begun digging in kitchens and other infrastructure that the Forest Service told them, "This is a real problem,'' he said.

Rainbow participants had three or four meetings with Forest Service representatives after choosing the Big Sandy site, before the officials said anything about the Boy Scout conflict, he said.

''We never would have gotten in that position if the Forest Service had indicated from the get-go that this was not a workable site,'' Beck said.

But District Ranger Tom Peters, the local official who has been attempting to work with the gathering participants, said the Rainbows' claims of ignorance about the Boy Scout conflict are not representative of what actually happened in the lead-up to their choice of location.

''The first time I was given an opportunity to talk to them wasn't all that long ago, and from the get-go I told them there was a conflict with the Scouts,'' Peters said.

The first time Peters heard that the Rainbows had chosen the Big Sandy area was June 5, he said, when about six Rainbow participants came to his office unannounced. During that first meeting he told them there was a conflict with Scouts, he said, ''And I committed to giving them a written document for all the reasons Big Sandy was not a good site, which I did Monday the 9th of June.''

The Forest Service provided the Rainbow participants -- at the Rainbows' request -- with four sites that would have been suitable for the event at the end of March, Peters said, and his understanding was that they'd chose from among the four sites.

The Rainbow Family instead chose Big Sandy, which was not on the list, he said.

Environment reporter Chris Merrill can be reached at chris.merrill@trib.com or at (307) 267-6722.