In Praise of Wilderness

Rather than an extended blog about wilderness for Earth Day and Earth Week, I'd rather share the words on nature and the wild by people far more eloquent than I am and share some pictures of our beautiful area. At the end, you'll get why Cathy Pedler of the Allegheny Defense Project is on our show today.

"The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild, and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World."

~Henry David Thoreau

“Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.”

~Edward Abbey

"Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature - the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter."

~Rachel Carson

"For unnumbered centuries of human history the wilderness has given way. The priority of industry has become dogma. Are we as yet sufficiently enlightened to realize that we must now challenge that dogma, or do without our wilderness? Do we realize that industry, which has been our good servant, might make a poor master?" 

~Aldo Leopold 

 

"We need to realize that, first, we don’t give rights to nature. Nature has rights. And more often than not, nature’s rights and people’s rights are allied as one in most places of the world, where, in places like Jaitapur, people are saying, 'This land is our mother.' This is not an esoteric idea. It’s the most relevant, potent, democratic idea of our times.” 

~Vandana Shiva 

"Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God." 

~George Washington Carver

We'll be joined by Cathy Pedler who's been active in the Allegheny Defense Project (ADP) since 2003. She's worked as an archaeological researcher and a sustainability coordinator and is an avid outdoors person. She will be telling us about the Heartwood Forest Council and the ADP's work past, present, and future to protect the forests and wilds of the Allegheny plateau and the Allegheny National Forest, Pennsylvania's only national forest. 

Listen in on Friday from 4-5 pm. Call in (814) 865-9577 with questions and comments. You can also join us on Facebook and Twitter as well.

Conservation and Sustainability from the Legislature: Conversation with Sen. Jake Corman

Pennsylvania has a complicated history regarding natural resource use. On the one hand, we have these incredible state park systems, forests, and game lands. But then we have the legacies of timbering, iron and steel, strip mines, and now the looming rush into shale gas. How has and is the legislature dealing with these issues? [See below.]

Over the last few decades, programs like Growing Greener have been helping us preserve our open and green spaces. The program has been very popular among a large segment of Pennsylvanians, but funding has been on the chopping block. And hearkening back to last week's show with Mike Hermann of Purple Lizard Maps and Frank Maguire of the International Mountain Bike Association, there's a lot of concern that Governor Tom Corbett is going to undercut the integrity of state forests and state parks by further opening them to gas drilling.

At the community level, people in the borough of State College overwhelmingly voted for a Community and Environmental Bill of Rights and a Fracking Ban in November. It was a landslide 72% "yays" to 28% "nays." But the recently passed Act 13 of the Oil and Gas Act might undercut home rule and the referendum State College passed. And pretty clearly, there are a lot of rumblings about shale gas development in the Marcellus Shale. Will Pennsylvania end up in another boom and bust like we did with oil and coal?

Our first guest on today's show, Senator Jake Corman (R - 34th district) grew up in Central Pennsylvania. His father was a senator before him and was my first acquaintance with a state politician. Jake Corman was elected in 1998 and is currently serving his fourth term. He chairs the Appropriations Committee and sits on several other committees. Because he sits at the helm of the Appropriations Committee, he has an intimate understanding of how the budget works whether that's money going into Going Greener or being dispersed from Act 13.

Call in with questions this afternoon from 4-5 pm: (814) 865-9577. You can also join us on Facebook and Twitter as well.

UPDATE: Senator Corman's office called this morning to inform us that a schedule change prevents him from coming on the show.

E.O. Wilson Coming to Penn State

I am a huge E.O. Wilson fan. His work on evolution, ecology, and love for life - what he calls "biophilia - has had an enormous impact on me personally and professionally. He is, to my mind, one of the 5 or 10 most important living voices on conservation and love of the land (along with Wendell Berry, Vandana Shiva, Lester Brown, Wolfgang Sachs, and the Ehrlichs to name some others) in the world. To my mind, his book The Creation is one of the best pieces of scientifically informed outreach to the religious community on the importance of saving biodiversity. You have the chance to see him at Penn State next week.

He is coming to Penn State's University Park campus on Monday April 16, 2012 as part of the 8th annual Colloquium on the Environment speaker series. His talk "The Social Conquest of Earth" is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. in 100 Thomas Building. A book signing and reception will immediately follow his lecture. Event is free and open to the public.

Wilson, the legendary biologist, is widely considered the father of the modern environmental movement. Named one of America's 25 Most Influential People by TIME magazine, and a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, he has made a giant contribution to our understanding of the rich spectrum of Earth's biodiversity. In his lectures, he makes a persuasive, eloquent plea to government, corporate and religious leaders to address the damage we have done to our planet before it's too late.

Wilson's works include Ants and On Human Nature, which both won the Pulitzer Prize; The Future of Life, which offers a plan for saving Earth's biological heritage; Consilience, which draws together the sciences, humanities, and the arts into a broad study of human knowledge; The Creation, a plea for science and religion to work together to save the planet; and From So Simple a Beginning, a collection of the four seminal works of Darwin, with new introductions by Wilson. His 2008 book, The Superorganism, was hailed by The New York Times as "an astonishing account of the intricate and unexpected swarm intelligence of wasps, bees, ants and termites."

A recent project of Wilson's, The Encyclopedia of Life website, catalogs all key information about life of Earth-- including data about every living species -- and makes it accessible to everyone. Launched with money from his 2007 TED Prize, the EOL recently received an additional ten million dollars from The MacArthur Foundation. Wilson is also the recipient of the U.S. National Medal of Science, the Crafoord Prize (a sister to the Nobel), and the Audubon Medal. He is the University Research Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, and continues to research at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Recently, Wilson teamed with Harrison Ford to create a new PEN Literary award titled the PEN/E.O. Wilson Award for Literary Science Writing.

For more information, please visit this site.

ClearWater Conservancy Earns Accreditation from the Land Trust Accreditation Commission

The Land Trust Accreditation Commission, an independent program of the Land Trust Alliance, announced this week that ClearWater Conservancy has been awarded accredited status.

“Accredited land trusts meet national quality standards for protecting important natural places and working lands forever,” said Commission Executive Director Tammara Van Ryn. “The accreditation seal lets the public know that the accredited land trust has undergone an extensive, external review of the governance and management of its organization and the systems and policies it uses to protect land.”

Based in State College, ClearWater Conservancy is the foremost land trust and natural resource conservation organization in central Pennsylvania. Since 1980, ClearWater has worked to improve central Pennsylvania for all through land conservation, water resource protection, and environmental outreach to the community.

“When ClearWater Conservancy first heard of the Land Trust Alliance accreditation program, we realized the importance of becoming a part of it. The two-and-a -half years we took to assess our organization and prepare our accreditation application made our organization stronger and more focused going forward. That application was 8 inches high of 8½ x 11 inch double sided sheets,” said Bill Hilshey, conservation easement manager at ClearWater and the lead staff member on the accreditation effort.

ClearWater Conservancy was awarded accreditation this month and is one of 158 land trusts from across the country awarded accreditation since the fall of 2008. Accredited land trusts are able to display a seal indicating to the public that they meet national standards for excellence, uphold the public trust and ensure that conservation efforts are permanent. The seal is a mark of distinction in land conservation.

“This distinction demonstrates ClearWater Conservancy’s proven commitment to the high standards established by the land trust community,” said Jennifer Shuey, ClearWater’s executive director. “We are very excited to share this milestone moment in our evolution with our members, partners, and the community that we serve.”

Shuey and Hilshey will attend the Land Trust Rally in Salt Lake City, Utah in the fall, where the 23 newly-accredited land trusts will be celebrated.

Land is America’s most important and valuable resource. Conserving land helps ensure clean air and drinking water, food security, scenic landscapes and views, recreational places, and habitat for the diversity of life on earth. Across the country, local citizens and communities have come together to form land trusts to save the places they love. Community leaders in land trusts throughout the country have worked with willing landowners to save over 47 million acres of farms, forests, parks and places people care about. Strong, well-managed land trusts provide local communities with effective champions and caretakers of their critical land resources, and safeguard the land through the generations.



Some of ClearWater’s many conservation and environmental protection achievements include:

- Conservation of nearly 5,000 acres of land in Central Pennsylvania through conservation easement, outright ownership or purchase and transfer to public ownership.

- Installation of 25,500 feet of streambank fencing and 48,000 feet of riparian buffer through our Riparian Conservation Program.

- Proper disposal of 2,738 tons of illegally dumped trash through our Watershed Cleanup Day, now in its 17th year.

- Funded thousands of elementary and middle school students in schools throughout Centre County to take outdoor field trips through our Connections programs.



More information about ClearWater Conservancy can be found at www.clearwaterconservancy.org or www.clearwaterconservancy.ning.com.



The Land Trust Accreditation Commission, based in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., awards the accreditation seal to community institutions that meet national quality standards for protecting important natural places and working lands forever. The Commission, an independent program of the Land Trust Alliance established in 2006, is governed by a volunteer board of diverse land conservation and nonprofit management experts from around the country. The Alliance, of which ClearWater Conservancy is a member, is a national conservation group based in Washington, D.C. that works to save the places people love by strengthening conservation throughout America. More information on the accreditation program is available on the Commission’s website, www.landtrustaccreditation.org. More information on the Alliance is available at www.landtrustalliance.org.



“We believed we were doing a good job as a land trust working with our local community, however receiving accreditation by the Land Trust Alliance and being able to display the Accreditation Seal, indicates to all a validation that our work is of a caliber worthy of national recognition. I am confident this recognition will serve to reinforce the local community’s trust in ClearWater Conservancy,” said ClearWater President Kellean Foster.

Governor Slashes Science, Sierra Club's Jeff Schmidt Swings Back

State Impact's Scott Detrow reports Gov. Tom Corbett's (R-PA) administration has gutted funding for research on the environmental impacts of Marcellus Shale natural gas development. Despite numerous statements by Corbett, DEP director Mike Krancer, and Lt. Governor Jim Cawley that they make decisions "based on science" or "based on fact," the picture painted here seems to black out the science.

Detrow writes that Depart­ment of Con­ser­va­tion and Nat­ural Resources Sec­re­tary director Richard Allan has overseen "sig­nif­i­cant changes" to state sci­en­tific research projects exam­in­ing nat­ural gas drilling and cli­mate change impacts. "Last month, Allan slashed the bud­get of the agency’s wildlife research pro­gram by nearly 70 per­cent...with­out consulting the four-person staff respon­si­ble for vet­ting sub­mit­ted pro­pos­als and rec­om­mend­ing them for funding." According to the article, DCNR attrib­utes the cuts were caused by declin­ing rev­enue in the con­ser­va­tion program’s fund. However, DCNR's statement released no criteria for why one program was cut over another.

Under the Rendell administration in 2010, four studies on gas drilling impacts and climate change impacts were funded. This coming year: only one. Despite the endorsement of the Wild Resource Conservation Board to fund two studies on gas, two on climate, and eight others in October. Then the rules abruptly changed, the budget was gutted, seventeen studies were slashed. Only one natural gas study remained.

It appears that political maneuvering played a key role. Detrow reports,

In 2010, nine of the rec­om­mended research projects exam­ined the impact of cli­mate change, and four looked at nat­ural gas drilling’s impli­ca­tions. Before the board voted, a staffer rep­re­sent­ing Hutchin­son at the meet­ing read a state­ment express­ing “deep con­cern and reser­va­tion” about the rec­om­mended projects. “In the past the [con­ser­va­tion pro­gram] has sup­ported projects that sought to restore a vari­ety of plant and non-game species to their habi­tats. It seems to me that this theme is not being car­ried for­ward,” Hutchin­son had writ­ten. “Instead, it appears to me, that the com­mit­tee is being asked to rec­om­mend projects for fund­ing that…[are] based upon advanc­ing spe­cific pub­lic pol­icy agen­das rather than one that is more neu­tral and sci­en­tific based.” Hutchin­son said he was refer­ring to the cli­mate change projects.

Patrick Hen­der­son rep­re­sented Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Mary Jo White at the meet­ing. He had a prob­lem with the projects, too. The offi­cial min­utes, approved by the board dur­ing its 2011 meet­ing, read, “Mr. Hen­der­son expressed con­cern about nat­ural gas extrac­tion being iden­ti­fied as an envi­ron­men­tal impact.” He said, “these projects may not war­rant this grant money,” ref­er­enc­ing sour­ing bud­get conditions.

Hen­der­son, of course, went on to become Gov­er­nor Corbett’s point man on energy and drilling poli­cies. As Energy Exec­u­tive, Hen­der­son sat on Corbett’s 2011 Mar­cel­lus Shale Advi­sory Com­mis­sion, and wrote the bulk of its final report.

Why does any of this matter? Detrow writes about the threat to scarlet tanager (pictured at right). These migratory songbirds require deep woods to thrive. As more well pads go in, there is less habitat for the birds. The 8-acre-per-well impact that's often quoted for Marcellus wells has a much larger impact in the forests. Including roads and all of the encroachment factors involved, the total impact can be 31 acres, roughly 1/3 of a kilometer per well. When you multiply that by the hundreds of wells in forests now and the thousands to come, the impacts become enormous. Wildlife is and will suffer.

The Response

The Sierra Club of Pennsylvania's Jeff Schmidt has come out swinging. In a press release today, he is quoted as saying, "Governor Corbett and DEP Secretary Mike Krancer repeatedly say they want sound science to dictate environmental policy in Pennsylvania. However, we have now learned that they are willing to slash funding for necessary scientific research to determine potential environmental harm for which their policies could be responsible. It is clear that the Corbett administration's political goals to promote gas drilling trump their claim to support sound science. In fact, the inconvenient reality is that while gas drilling is ruining drinking water supplies and wildlife habitat, the Corbett administration engages in a cover up of the true impacts."

The press release goes on to cite instances where DEP covered up a Cabot Oil and Gas spill in Lenox, Pennsylvania and ruled the company could cease supplying fresh water to the town of Dimock despite having been found to have polluted the town's water. To compound issues with the directorship of DCNR, earlier this week the Executive Director of the Conservation and Natural Resources Advisory Committee (CNRAC), who provides oversight of DCNR's oil and gas drilling activities on Pennsylvania's public forests and parks, was fired.

"The pattern of the Corbett administration's environmental policies is becoming more apparent every day," Schmidt continued. "We call on the General Assembly to halt the rush to drill in Pennsylvania, and to scrap legislation such as HB 1950, which was written by the Corbett administration. It is time our elected officials represented the people of Pennsylvania, not the out-of-state drillers."

We suspect that in the next 24 hours, the blogosphere will light up with this news as will other environmental organizations like PennFuture, PennEnvironment, and others.

Pennsylvania Conservation. Alaskan Wilderness.

This Friday at 4 pm we will be hosting Jennifer Shuey, the Executive Director of ClearWater Conservancy. They are a Centre County based land trust and natural resource conservation organization "promoting conservation and restoration of natural resources in central Pennsylvania through land conservation, water resource protection, and environmental outreach to the community." They work on a number of conservation initiatives from stream clean-ups to purchasing and maintaining conservation easements for recreation and preservation and lots of public outreach initiatives. She will be joined by photographer Sam Holderman (see below) about their initiatives this Friday from 4-5 pm on the Lion.

This weekend, they are putting an event as part of their Adventures in Conservation series.

Wildlife photographer Buck Wilde will show and narrate his photographs in "Voices from the Last Wilderness: A Spiritual Odyssey Among Wolf, Raven, Salmon, and Bear," Nov. 5 at 7 p.m. at the State Theatre, 130 West College Avenue, State College.

Join Buck in Alaska as grizzly bears and white wolves pursue wild salmon from estuaries to headwaters and witness the vitality of these unspoiled ecosystems. The home stretch of a two-year migration at sea lies upstream. But the salmon have one last gauntlet to run, between the legs of a gathering of hungry grizzly bears and white wolves. Not all of the salmon will make it home. The bears need high-grade sushi to survive hibernation, and the wolves are amazingly proficient at catching the salmon when trapped in shallows and bottlenecks, even more so than the grizzly bears.

Sam Holderman (a.k.a. Buck Wilde) is a Centre County native and Penn State alumnus. His passion for the natural world began here along central Pennsylvania's rocky ridge tops and mountain streams. He's been leading world-acclaimed filmmakers, photographers and nature enthusiasts into Alaska's unspoiled wilderness to capture amazing footage of nature's spectacles for more than 20 years. BBC naturalist David Attenborough refers to Buck Wilde as the Bear Whisperer! See more about Buck Wilde's adventures here.

Tickets are $10 for adults, $5 for children 12 and under and can be purchased in person at the State Theatre Box Office.

On Friday afternoon from 4-5 pm, listen in to The Lion 90.7 fm and feel free to call (814) 865-9577 to ask questions or comment. You can also send us questions by commenting below or emailing us at: sustainabilitynowradio@gmail.com. Join the Sustainability Now Facebook group page where you can interact with other listeners and leave questions.

Conservation and sustainability at Shaver's Creek Environmental Center

Since we were little kids, Mike and I have been going to Shaver's Creek Environmental Center, one of the finest centers of environmental education in the United States. Every year, over 100,000 children, parents, and college students go to Shaver's Creek to walk a boardwalk over a wetland, to breathe in the air of natural and experimental forest, witness the diversity of wildlife from raptors (see video below) to snakes, go to Outdoor School or Orion, or attend the Maple Harvest Festival (this weekend!).

For some, it is their first acquaintance with environmental education and it can awaken them to the beauty and awe of the natural world. Peter remembers seeing his first copperheads and black rat snakes there. A boy's first encounter with snakes is never forgotten.

On today's show, we are fortunate to talk with Mark McLaughlin, director of Shaver's Creek. Mark will talk to us about the role of conservation, outdoor, and environmental education in sustainability. We'll discuss Shaver's Creek's mission and purpose, its history, its programs, and its future.

What if teaching went wild? What if instead of No Child Left Behind we went to No Child Left Inside? Can we be conservationists in our own backyards? What can we do to be the best people we can be where we live?

As one of Shaver's Creek's workers notes in the video below, "There's no line separating us. We are all a part of this world. Shaver's Creek is a way to show that." So tune in today, Friday March 26th at 4 pm on the Lion 90.7.