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 Pennsylvanian's and the nation—where we take our families to hike, camp, fish and teach our kids about Pennsylvania's incredible natural history and the values we share to protect these outdoor wonders.

Constant threats

Unfortunately, our parks, forests, and other public lands face a barrage of threats. These threats include ongoing pollution, fracking and Marcellus Shale drilling, encroaching development, and coal mining. At the same time, politicians in Harrisburg and Washington DC threaten to slash funding for protecting our state and federal parks and forests, and even press to privatize these lands and sell them off to the highest bidder.  

These activities would do irreparable harm to these places we love, threaten the wildlife that make the parks their home, and diminish the natural heritage that we’ll leave for our children and future generations.

Politicians are moving in the wrong direction

In both Harrisburg and Washington DC, our elected officials are pushing a set of policies that will decimate Pennsylvania's-- and the nation's-- public lands.  

This includes:

  • Moving forward with policies that would strip funding from successful program that protects our parks and other open spaces from development and drilling like the Land and Water Conservation Fund, Growing Greener and the Keystone Fund.
  • Slashing budgets for the agencies charged with protecting, maintaining and overseeing our parks and forests;
  • Allowing harmful practices like fracking in our treasured state and federal parks and forests; 
  • And even taking our parks away from the public and privatizing them.

Together, we can protect Pennsylvania’s parks, forests, and public lands

At PennEnvironment, we’re making sure that the people who value and enjoy our public lands, the places we love, the programs and agencies that protect them have a voice in Harrisburg and Washington DC. We are talking to Pennsylvanians about what’s at stake, testifying in our nation’s and state’s capitol, educating lawmakers, and shining a spotlight in the media on the need to protect our parks, forests and other critical public lands.

Preservation Updates

Headline

Severance tax could be used to fund Growing Greener program

Incredibly, Pennsylvania remains the only major drilling state in the nation that has failed to implement a severance tax on gas drilling. Due to the destructive and dangerous nature of Marcellus Shale drilling, it only makes sense to direct a portion of the funds to the state's environmental and conservation programs, like Pennsylvania's Growing Greener program.

> Keep Reading
Report | PennEnvironment Research and Policy Center

Grand Canyon at Risk

Uranium mining—which often requires vast open pits, spreads radioactive dust through the air, and leaks radioactivity and toxic chemicals into the environment—is among the riskiest industrial activities in the world. Every uranium mine ever operated in the United States has required some degree of toxic waste cleanup, and the worst have sickened dozens of people, contaminated miles of rivers and streams, and required the cleanup of hundreds of acres of land.

> Keep Reading
News Release | PennEnvironment Research and Policy Center

Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area Under Threat from Underfunding

A new report released today by PennEnvironment, The Best of America Under Threat from Underfunding, showed that visitorship to the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area is on the rise. But even as the Water Gap draws more and more visitors, it faces budget cuts in the coming year—leaving it with fewer resources for maintenance, upkeep and stewardship.

> Keep Reading
Report | PennEnvironment Research and Policy Center

The Best of America Under Threat from Underfunding

America’s national parks are the nation’s most treasured places—where visitors can experience the best of America’s great outdoors, wildlife, history and culture. National parks are becoming increasingly popular. In 2009, overall visitorship was up by 4%, the highest level in nearly a decade.23 Two-thirds of national parks, including parks in nearly every state, saw an increase in visitors in 2009. However, even as more people are visiting parks, operating budgets for the majority of national parks are at risk of being cut.

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Headline

Editorial: Staying Green

With natural-gas drilling posing one of the biggest challenges to Pennsylvania's environment since the days of coal strip mining, this is no time for Harrisburg officials to stand by and let funding dry up for the commonwealth's premier conservation effort.

That's just what could happen this year unless new money is provided for the state's $1.3 billion Growing Greener program - launched by a Republican governor, Tom Ridge, and enthusiastically expanded by a Democratic successor, Gov. Rendell.

> Keep Reading

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