E
Elana
New member
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2009
- Messages
- 5
Industry officials, and their friends in Pennsylvania's General Assembly, have proposed rampant leasing of our state forests as an alternative to a natural gas extraction tax. Yet forestry experts are clear that rushing to lease additional state forest lands at the scales some have proposed will cause irrevocable damage to one of the Commonwealth’s most enduring natural and economic assets. One proposal is for the leasing of 390,000 additional acres of forest, which is more than 3 times what DCNR has said they can sustainable do. 31% of our state forests are already open for drilling.
Drilling cannot be accelerated without fundamentally altering the character and quality of our forests, including the streams within them. If there is any doubt about this, the legislature should require of DCNR a rigorous study of the potential harms to biological integrity, hunting, fishing, public recreation and tourism opportunities, and other economic uses of the forest and subject the study to vigorous inspection and debate.
Our representatives and senators must hear strongly from the fishing community that the long term health of our state forests is not an acceptable cost for the short-term filling of only a portion of the state budget deficit. Call your senator and representative TODAY! (use the box in the upper right hand corner of http://www.legis.state.pa.us to find your legislators). You can also contact me at drillinghasconsequences@gmail.com for more information.
Drilling cannot be accelerated without fundamentally altering the character and quality of our forests, including the streams within them. If there is any doubt about this, the legislature should require of DCNR a rigorous study of the potential harms to biological integrity, hunting, fishing, public recreation and tourism opportunities, and other economic uses of the forest and subject the study to vigorous inspection and debate.
Our representatives and senators must hear strongly from the fishing community that the long term health of our state forests is not an acceptable cost for the short-term filling of only a portion of the state budget deficit. Call your senator and representative TODAY! (use the box in the upper right hand corner of http://www.legis.state.pa.us to find your legislators). You can also contact me at drillinghasconsequences@gmail.com for more information.