By Cindy Adams Dunn, PennFuture President & CEO
I was fortunate enough to grow up in an area teeming with wildlife and wild plants -- our rural home even had a small stream running through the property. When we were small, we were allowed to fish there, alone, long before we were allowed to walk downstream to the much larger creek. Some days we fished with real fishing rods, but many days we just “pretend” fished with a stick and string, or played in the water. I liked to watch the small trout in the pools as they cruised their small world in the dappled sunlight.
At that stage in my life, I never knew it was a headwaters trout stream, but I did know it was special. Over time, a road carved into the mountain upstream by developers changed the characteristics of the stream so that flood waters blew out the banks, carried silt and sediment and eventually, there we no trout – just minnows and crayfish.
More recently, I have learned to reconnect with that childhood fun by fishing in headwaters streams. A few years ago, my nephews and I crept up to the headwater pools in Laurel Hill Creek. Seeing the trout in their pool before they see you, and crawling through the brush, is part of the game. With hooks bent to avoid harming the fish, it is all about tricking the small trout to biting. It is a big adventure in a small creek for a small fish.
I know all too well what happens to these streams where there is upstream development or pollution. Even a single road or crossing can disrupt the delicate balance.
Pennsylvania House Bill 1576 has received a lot of attention because of its attack on the professional and scientific process of designating and protecting our state’s precious natural legacy. A who’s who of special interests is supporting the bill in order to ease the regulation of threatened and endangered species as well as Wild Trout Stream designations. The real driver of the bill is the natural gas industry, whose roads, pads and pipelines intersect with wetlands, headwaters and remote areas where threatened and endangered species are found.
When the gas industry, or any interest, is planning a project, they are owed a timely and accurate answer on the potential impact of development on threatened and endangered species.
The three Pennsylvania agencies that regulate this process – the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Fish and Boat Commission and the Pennsylvania Game Commission -- have made great strides in updating data, mapping, and response time. The vast majority of the time, projects are unimpeded by the protection of a species, and the response time has improved substantially where there is a threatened or endangered species in the project area.These agencies are also in the process of updating the Pennsylvania Natural Diversity environmental review tool, which will make further enhancements to the process by which permit applicants can better review and plan their projects.
But the real answer here is to support more scientists, more data, better tools and a serious conversation about how to improve the program. The answer is certainly not a bill that would strip away protection and put the bar too high for already overburdened scientists. These folks are already working plenty hard to protect and improve the natural inheritance we will leave to future inhabitants of Penn’s Woods who may choose to venture down to a clean stream in their midst.
