"We cannot and will not hold our breath forever," Sec. Jewell noted in her remarks on the increasing need for action following the forced government shutdown. The 16-day shutdown last month only worsened the financial situation for America's national parks and wildlife refuges, already hard-hit by sequestration cuts. Additionally, the last Congress was the first since World War II not to designate even one new national park, wilderness, or monument.
Here in Pennsylvania, many of our public lands, including those managed by the Commonwealth, are also under stress. You've followed our ongoing legal and organizing work on the Loyalsock State Forest and the fight for a robust public process regarding any gas drilling planned for this special forest and its clear headwater streams. We're also part of a six-state coalition working to safeguard the nation's largest estuary -- the Chesapeake Bay -- by making our thousands of miles of Pennsylvania streams and rivers cleaner for all of us in the public who use and enjoy them. Yet the challenges are great, as we have known for a long time.
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| Laurel Run State Park |
President Theodore Roosevelt was responsible for the conservation of at least 230 million acres of land -- places that today, a century on, are ingrained as a part of who we are. One hundred and five years ago, Roosevelt was prescient as he opened a gathering of conservationists with these words:
"We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources. But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils have still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields and obstructing navigation."
