Protecting and Restoring our Lands and Waters

1. Protecting and Restoring our Lands and Waters Cindy Dunn DCNR Deputy Secretary for Conservation and Technical Services

2. Protecting & Restoring Lands & WatersBackground • Pennsylvania’s natural areas and waters provide a connected system • PA has a long history as a national conservation leader

3. Protecting & Restoring Lands & WatersBackground • PA also has a history of environmental destruction counterbalanced with a history of turning challenges into conservation victories and national leadership

4. Protecting & Restoring Lands & WatersBackground • 1900s: indiscriminate logging laid waste to 4 million acres of Penn’s Woods • Rothrock mounted crusade to save remaining forests • 1895: Forestry Commission established • Today: 2.1 million acres of public forest land and 60% of Commonwealth is forested

5. Protecting & Restoring Lands & WatersBackground • Mining of state’s coal reserve fueled industrial revolution but left legacy of 250,000 acres of abandoned mines and 2,400 miles of polluted streams • 1945: Surface Mining Reclamation and Control Act • 1977: Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fund

6. Protecting & Restoring Lands & WatersBackground • 1945: Surface Mining Reclamation and Control Act • 1955: Oil and Gas Fund • 1961: Delaware River Basin Commission (Goddard) • 1972: Susquehanna River Basin Commission • 1964: “Project 70” approved • 1971: Environmental Rights Amendment to PA Constitution approved • 1982: Scenic River program established • 1993: Keystone Recreation, Park and Conservation Act

7. Protecting & Restoring Lands & WatersIssues 1. PA continues to lose our natural areas to sprawl at rate of 300 acres/day 2. Wildlife, fish and plants threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation, climate change, extractive industries, invasive species, atmospheric deposition, and polluted storm water 3. Rivers and streams continue to be threatened 4. Diffuse authority over land, water, and wildlife complicates cohesive management

8. Protecting & Restoring Lands & WatersIssues 5. Water quantity is a growing concern and 1/3 of the state is not covered by a river basin commission 6. Marcellus Shale gas extraction threatens wildlife habitat, wild trout waters and drinking water if not carefully managed 7. Funds are nearly exhausted; there is an urgent need to seek increased and new funding sources

9. Protecting & Restoring Lands & WatersIssues

10. Protecting & Restoring Lands & WatersOpportunities • Public support for learning from our past history of resource extraction in the development of the Marcellus Shale Formation • DEP regulations • Proposed 27 additional DEP inspectors and Additional DCNR staff • Extraction impact fees have potential to boost conservation funds and limit drilling on forest lands

11. Protecting & Restoring Lands & WatersOpportunities • Abandoned Mine Lands reauthorization of 2006 is paying dividends with $1.5 billion in funds projected over next 15 years • PA residents continue to support land conservation and watershed clean up in large numbers (Adams Co. example)

12. Protecting & Restoring Lands & WatersOpportunities • Land and water conservation and restoration is at the center of community and regional revitalization strategies (e.g. Conservation Landscape Initiative) • Federal government’s new focus on large landscape conservation (Treasured Landscapes, Landscape Conservation Collaboratives)

13. Protecting & Restoring Lands & WatersSummary • We are facing the most significant conservation challenge of our careers. • Our ability to navigate this challenge as a broad conservation coalition of private sector and government partners is greater than it has been in the past 25 years.