Get involved with Conservation Heritage
By Dave Hurst
© 2015 Hurst Media Works
Pennsylvania has been known for its lush forests ever since it was named “Penn’s woods”
by founder William Penn. Today our state is still one of the nation’s most-wooded.
Forests cover 16.7 million acres – 59 percent – of the commonwealth. As taxpaying
residents, we own 2.2 million of those acres, which are contained within state forests.
Those numbers are rather amazing when you consider that from the mid-19th through the
mid-20th centuries, Pennsylvania also was among the nation’s most-industrialized states.
Most of Penn’s woods had been timbered by the 1920s for iron-making charcoal,
building materials, tannin for leather tanning, coal-mine roof supports, plus a myriad of
other uses.
Few trees escaped lumber company axes. Across the Commonwealth, timbering practices
left vast tracts of stumps where forests had been clear-cut.
Industrial communities and coal patches sprang up and dumped raw sewage into
neighboring streams. Steel companies filled in entire waterways with slag. Coal mines
created mountains of waste and spewed dirty water carrying dissolved metals.
While we still can see the effects of that industrial period and have more restoration work
to do, Penn’s woods remain truly impressive in all of their natural beauty today. That
didn’t happen by accident.
For around the same time that industry was recklessly exploiting our natural resources,
other Pennsylvanians were stepping up – and into positions where they could take
positive actions to conserve our natural resources.
In 1895, for example, Dr. Joseph Rothrock became the head of a new Division of
Forestry. His establishment of the state forest system which, today, includes 19 state
forests (five of them at least partially within our region), earned him the title of “Father of
Forestry.”
Mira Dock became the first woman to hold a government post in Pennsylvania in 1901,
when she was appointed to a State Forest commission that was charged with protecting
the headwater areas of the Ohio, Susquehanna and Delaware rivers. She also helped to
clean up and beautify Harrisburg by advocating for paved streets, covered sewer
interceptors, parks, recreational opportunities and green space along the Susquehanna.
President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Gifford Pinchot to be the first Chief of the
United States Forest Service in 1905. Pinchot would go on to serve two terms as
Pennsylvania’s governor (1923-27 and 1931-35) and became known for his advocacy of
planned use and renewal of natural resources.
Maurice Goddard headed the Department of Forests and Waters and, later, the
Department of Environmental Resources for 24 years under six governors. During that
period he oversaw the creation of 45 state parks, covering 130,000 acres of Pennsylvania
landscape.
Brief biographies of these people and dozens of others, who have some sort of connection
with Pennsylvania’s conservation heritage, can be found in a “Conservation Hall of
Fame” at paconservationheritage.org.
This website is part of an initiative known as “Pennsylvania’s Conservation Heritage,” a
multi-faceted project to document and record the rich history of natural conservation
within our state. Supporting this effort is a group of state agencies, professional
organizations and private foundations.
In addition to the Hall of Fame, you’ll find links to other resources and a section on how
you – or your organization – can get involved. For an important component of this project
is public engagement.
Once completed in 2017, Pennsylvania’s Conservation Heritage products will include a
comprehensive website; a book; a video documentary produced in collaboration with
WITF-TV, Harrisburg’s public television station; and a series of articles in popular and
academic publications.
The basic idea is to bring the interesting stories and distinctive characters of
Pennsylvania’s conservation heritage out of the forest and into public view, where they
can inspire the new generations of conservationists needed to carry on the work of
keeping Penn’s woods beautiful.