Human communities and natural communities hold together in different ways.
For people, community is created by family, friends, schools and libraries, places of worship, local stores and car clubs, garden clubs, historical societies, job sites, and a shared love of home.
Natural communities are bound together by creeks and wetlands and the land they rely on. Soil, rock, dissolved and solid nutrients, shrubs and trees, clean air, fish, bugs, and animals of every size.
The bonds are strong. But both can be scarred for decades by disaster-- wildfires and flooding, epidemics and crazy-hot heat, hurricanes and tornadoes and war.
Forests face yet another kind of assault: timbering.
Most public lands are managed for multiple purposes, from recreation and wildlife habitat to public income. Wood products are valuable in countless ways, and timber harvesting in Pennsylvania can raise millions of dollars a year.
Poorly managed timber operations have immediate, obvious impacts.
Building access roads compacts the soil. So does traveling the forest in heavy equipment, lugging out the harvest.
Cutting the trees opens the forest floor — its own unique ecosystem — to flooding and too much sun. Understory plants shrivel in the unaccustomed glare. The birds, pollinators, and mammals large and small are driven out or die.
And, oh, what happens to the wetlands and waterways. Sediment from disturbed soil suffocates sensitive creek creatures.
Water heats up under the newly opened sky, stressing or killing cold-water-loving aquatic life.
Intense nutrient loads can contaminate drinking water sources and feed choking blooms of algae that siphon off oxygen, create toxins, clog fish gills, upend nature’s balance, and, well, you get the picture.
All earth disturbance in Pennsylvania requires an “Erosion and Sedimentation Plan” before work begins, to keep soil from running off the land into nearby streams.
But few municipalities require that E&S plans be reviewed by a competent agency, such as the County Conservation District, or even have ordinances that give the municipality authority to enforce proper controls.
And thanks to lobbyists, municipalities are severely restricted as to what ordinances can stipulate-- such as requiring that forests be managed sustainably.
More than half of the forestland in America is owned by individuals, families and corporations.
Reputable timbering companies and sensible private landowners play by the rules-- and often choose to go above and beyond the minimums to keep the forest healthy and sustainable.
Taking action to protect water, wildlife and forests is sometimes branded radical, or extremist, or just plain cuckoo.
It’s no such thing: as clever as we humans think we are, our very lives depend on the basics of a healthy natural community-- clean air, water, world.
Do your part.
The public can help. If you spot discolored or muddy water flowing into a creek, or a fish kill, or something seems to be spilling into a creek-- that’s an environmental emergency.
Call our local Monroe County Conservation District at 570-629-3060 or Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection at 800-541-2050.
Basics of “sustainable forestry” include managing forests for the long term, in ways that support healthy trees, soil, wildlife and water, while also providing needed forestry products.
An example of sustainable forestry is deliberately not harvesting all the best trees, leaving only the weakest. Click Here to find out more.
Visit the Water At Risk webpage for more articles in this series.
The Brodhead Watershed Association protects water quality and quantity throughout our area. Get involved! Become a member!
Related Article:
-- Brodhead Watershed Association: Protecting Clean Water Together - Thinking About Disaster 70 Years Later - The Flood Of 1955 In Monroe County [PaEN]
[Posted: August 11, 2025] PA Environment Digest
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