Our Natural Heritage Reports
Search
•
RSS Feed
Executive Summary
Severe cuts in two of Pennsylvania's key environmental programs—coupled with new policies that would intensify logging and oil and gas drilling on public lands—threaten the future of many key ecosystems across the state. Earlier this year, Gov. Mark Schweiker announced deep cuts in the Keystone Recreation, Park and Conservation (Keystone) Fund, which has helped protect more than 35,000 acres of natural land since 1993, and in the Growing Greener program, which has supported countless local efforts to clean up long-polluted streams, protect key wildlife habitat, and expand recreational opportunities for Pennsylvanians. Meanwhile, state officials have proposed the largest-ever sale of oil and gas drilling leases in state-owned lands—a move that could potentially impact more than 500,000 acres of state forest, mostly located in north-central Pennsylvania. In addition, the U.S. Forest Service is in the process of initiating two new timber sales in the Allegheny National Forest that would lead to extensive clear-cutting and road-building in Pennsylvania’s only National Forest. These policies would have major environmental impacts across the state. This report illustrates those impacts by highlighting the potential damage that could be done to ten important Pennsylvania ecosystems. Specifically, the policies have the potential to: • Slow the pace of land preservation in the Schuylkill River watershed, a 1,900 square-mile area in southeastern Pennsylvania that provides drinking water for more than 1.8 million people.
• Increase development pressures in the Unami Creek Valley Woodlands, the largest surviving band of forest in fast-growing Montgomery and Bucks counties; the French Creek watershed of Chester County, a natural and historic jewel located on the outskirts of the Philadelphia metropolitan area; and the Bear Creek area of Luzerne County, which is threatened by rapid development in the Poconos region.
• Delay protection for highly productive farmland in Lancaster and Chester counties, where sprawl threatens to overtake farms that have served as the breadbasket of the Northeast for three centuries and destroy the region’s rich tradition of family farming.
• Allow acid mine drainage to continue to pollute rivers and streams in the Slippery Rock Creek and Kiskiminetas-Conemaugh River watersheds in Western Pennsylvania.
• Limit efforts to prevent nutrient runoff from farmland into northwestern Pennsylvania’s French Creek, the most biologically diverse waterway in Pennsylvania.
• Pollute waterways and fragment natural habitat in the Susquehannock, Sproul, Tioga, Tiadaghton and other state forests and state-owned lands in north-central Pennsylvania.
• Destroy thousands of acres of forest in the Allegheny National Forest, fragmenting wildlife habitat, polluting waterways, and impinging on natural treasures such as Pennsylvania’s largest remaining stand of old-growth forest.
To preserve these and hundreds of other important ecosystems across the state, Pennsylvania must follow through on its commitments to environmental preservation. Specifically, the state should: • Restore promised funding to the Keystone Fund, whose dedicated source of funding was cut in 2002.
• Fully fund the $650 million, five-year commitment made by former Gov. Tom Ridge to the Growing Greener program, and increase funding for the program to deal with the billion dollar-plus backlog in conservation programs. Funds for the project should come from an independent, dedicated funding source and not be diverted from other environmental programs.
• Abandon plans to lease a half-million acres of state forests for oil and gas drilling. Widespread oil and gas drilling is incompatible with the continued use of state forests as wildlife habitat, recreational areas, and protected headwaters for rivers and streams. In addition, the Legislature must guarantee that public input be solicited and taken into account before future lease sales are approved.
In addition, the federal government should abandon plans to intensify logging in the Allegheny National Forest. Federal officials should also set aside more of the forest as protected wilderness, ensuring that it will continue to serve ecological needs for generations to come.
|
