The land we know as Pennsylvania, translated from Latin as “Penn’s Woods,” has supported people for some 16,000 years, long before William Penn founded the province via a 1681 land grant from the king of England. Likewise, the forests need our help to continue offering beauty, peace and solitude; cleaning of the air and water; protection from climate change; and valuable wood products. That’s where the draft “Forests for All: A Plan for Pennsylvania’s Forests and People” comes in.
The state Bureau of Forestry, part of the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, is working on the strategic plan to be finalized late this year or in early 2025. It’s the first such plan since “Penn’s Woods: Sustaining Our Forests” was developed and released in the mid-to-late 1990s. State Forester Seth Cassell on Wednesday night led a virtual meeting to offer an overview of the 30-page update.
It comes at a time of increasing peril for trees, including from the impacts of invasive insects like the emerald ash borer and woolly adelgid, which decimate stands of ash, a valuable hardwood, and Eastern hemlock, the state tree. “It has been really unrelenting the last several decades,” Cassell said of the threat posed by non-native, invasive species, adding they are unlikely to be eliminated. “They’ve been introduced to our ecosystem, and they’re here to stay, a lot of them.
” Pennsylvania’s forests have faced challenges before. The state first f.