Protect Our Parks

The best of Pennsylvania

From Valley Forge to the rolling fields of Gettysburg; from Pennsylvania’s portion of the Appalachian Trail and the Delaware Water Gap to Pennsylvania’s awe-inspiring state parks like Ohiopyle and Ricketts Glen. These are our greatest places—for PA and the nation—and where families hike, camp, fish and teach their kids about our state’s history.

Constant threats

Unfortunately, our state’s parks face a barrage of threats from encroaching overdevelopment, ongoing pollution, fracking and Marcellus Shale drilling, and coal mining. These activities would degrade these great places, threaten the wildlife that make the parks their home, and diminish the natural heritage that we’ll leave for our children and future generations.

Congress is moving in the wrong direction

To make matters worse, Congress is on the verge of decimating the nation’s most successful program that protects our parks and other open spaces from development and drilling—the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

For the past five decades, the Land and Water Conservation Fund’s mission has been to protect America’s greatest—and often most threatened—places. For Pennsylvania, that means places like Valley Forge, Gettysburg and our portion of the Appalachian Trail.

But if our elected officials don’t act soon, this critical program will end up on Congress’s cutting room floor, forever hindering America’s great legacy of conservation and protection for our best places.

Together, we can protect Pennsylvania’s parks

Saving the Land and Water Conservation Fund will be a tough challenge, but we’re up to the task. We are talking to Pennsylvanians about what’s at stake, testifying in Washington, D.C., educating lawmakers, and shining a spotlight in the media on the need to protect our parks. Please take action for our parks and email your member of Congress.