State Forests

Industry groups and some legislators oppose the gas severance tax and instead want to dramatically accelerate drilling on publicly owned forestlands to generate revenues for the state. During the 2009-2010 budget debates, senators, representatives and the governor made a remarkable change to how Pennsylvania's State Forests are managed. They enacted legislation via the state budget that dictated that DCNR extract $60 million of drilling revenue out of our publicly owned lands. It later came out that there was a secret agreement that another $180 million should be extracted from our state forests in the coming budget year. The Secretary of DCNR, the agency entrusted to sustainably manage our forests, was not informed of this secret agreement to use our forests as a cash machine. Clearly, sustainability was not part of the deliberations. Clearly, assessment of potential impacts to the forests was not part of the deliberations.

Those calling for increased drilling fail to recognize that:

Decisions about how one of the Commonwealth’s greatest resources are managed and used should be made by sound scientific research focused on long-term sustainability, not by short term revenues. With the January 2010 lease sale, the Commonwealth has leased 402,000 acres of State Forest in the Marcellus Fairway. Industry has access to an additional 290,000 acres of State Forest where the gas rights were previously severed. This means that 692,000 acres or 33% of State Forests are already fully open for Marcellus gas drilling. How many Marcellus wells have been drilled on these 660,000 acres? … Three! It is sensible to evaluate what gas development does to the 33% of State Forest open for Marcellus gas drilling before opening more forest to drilling. With only two wells drilled, this clearly will take some time.
Our State Forests are our greatest public asset, protecting our highest quality streams, providing public recreation, supporting tourism, and providing a sustainable timber supply. As such, we should exercise balance and restraint in considering opening additional lands for drilling. Before we rush to lease our remaining State Forest Lands, we should evaluate the impacts of current gas leases on water and air quality, wildlife, public recreation, including hunting, fishing and wildlife watching, and the general health of our forests.
Our public foresters worked hard to achieve sustainable management certification of our State Forests. Rampant, unplanned leasing of our State Forests not only jeopardizes ecologically sound forest management, it also threatens our forests’ third-party certification.