cook forest Archives - Cook Forest Conservancy

CFSPbridges on Giving Tuesday

Facebook is waiving all donation fees, and matching all donations on #givingtuesday! This 3 December 2019, all funds raised for the CFSPbridges campaign will be doubled!

You can help us by running a fundraiser on your facebook page, and sharing it with your friends and family – here’s how:

Here are links to useful pages:

Facebook’s “create a fundraiser” page – facebook.com/fund/cookforestconservancy
the #CFSPbridges photos on Instagram – instagram.com/explore/tags/cfspbridges/
photos of the bridges you can use to customize your fundraiser: cookforestconservancy.smugmug.com/ Trails/CFSPbridges

Thanks for your support!

Penn’s Parks for All – DCNR Plan

Please take a few moments to review the DCNR’s draft “Penn’s Parks for All” report which features recommendations for managing Pennsylvania state parks for the future, based on public comments gathered the past two years. The report acknowledges that DCNR is “operating 121 parks with decreasing resources,” while visitation pressure increases, facilities age, and the forests themselves are beset by invasives, disease, and encroachment.

There will be a meeting for Cook Forest and Clear Creek State Parks on 5 December 2019, 6 pm at the Cook Forest State Park Office – all are welcome and encouraged to attend – share your concerns, priorities, and questions for the future of our beautiful, wild spaces, locally and state-wide.

DCNR needs "more than $500 million due to the appropriated budget for state parks not keeping up with inflation, and due to a reduction in staff, requiring higher costs for contracted labor.
The condition of state park facilities is deteriorating, with some facilities being shuttered, and some recreation activities no longer available — while demand for park use is higher than ever before."

According to a Penn State report, Pennsylvania’s state parks support 12,630 jobs (part-time and full-time), and contribute $400 million in labor income, and $1.15 billion in sales annually. For every $1 invested in state parks from the state’s General Fund, $12.41 is returned to Pennsylvania’s economy. Yet only 0.16% of the state’s General Fund budget goes to state parks.

It’s not only trails, campgrounds, and pavilions that need funding – the forests themselves are under assault from multiple threats that can’t be handled passively. The parks face “declining forest health from invasive plants and animals, declining plant and animal diversity, and fragmentation impacts from roads, trails,” and utilities. DCNR needs funds to acquire inholdings and boundary properties, to to implement “projects that will mitigate the effects of climate change and that address habitat resiliency, riparian buffers, and lake and stream restoration.”

Survey respondents were generally in favor of all these projects – land acquisition, water quality improvement, habitat protection – and “the vast majority agreed or strongly agreed (87%) that visitors to state parks should expect a quiet, natural, and/or wild experience.” Report recommendations also include the establishment of a night sky management program, expansion of educational programs on sustainable and leave no trace practices, and outreach to middle and high school students to create the next generation of stewards of the state park system.

To accomplish this, DCNR will need to meet another of its goals – “ensur[ing] that conservation funding (e.g., the Keystone Fund and the Environmental Stewardship Fund) is used for stewardship purposes to repair and improve park resources.” To keep our parks healthy and fully functioning, DCNR will need your support, too – in making public lands a priority for legislators.

This report is only the draft – comments will be accepted until 31 December 2019. Please attend a meeting, or submit comments online.

Funding Shortfalls in Cook Forest State Park

While visitation is increasing, state funding of the park system continues to dwindle, and the impacts are being felt here in Cook Forest State Park.

One of the busiest of our steel bridges over Tom’s Run closed earlier this year, with five more slated to follow – which requires trail re-routing away from some of the forest’s most lovely locations. Playgrounds are being removed, and picnic tables are turning into nurse logs.

This article printed in the Oil City Derrick details the issues affecting our park, which hosts nearly 500,000 visitors annually, which produces $11 million dollars in economic activity in the area. Please read the full account here – and then urge your legislators to support our beloved state parks, and restore the funding to them: https://www.thederrick.com/free/cook-forest-facilities-are-being-closed/article_76a74e40-d173-11e9-98fc-d75dcc79ddd4.html

If the webpage link ever doesn’t work, a PDF version is available here:

2019-09-06 Cook Forest facilities are being closed _ thederrick

Anthropologie in Cook Forest!

Anthropologie supports the hemlocks of Cook Forest State Park

After shooting their fall lighting catalog along lovely Tom’s Run in Cook Forest State Park, Anthropologie decided to get its charity, Philanthropie, involved in saving the hemlock trees that line the stream & do their own important work – protecting the aquatic residents, cleaning our water, and keeping the forest cool and stable. They’re under assault from hemlock woolly adelgid (HWA), a tiny invasive insect, and the CFC and many other entities – the Bureau of Forestry, the USFS, and the DCNR – are cooperating to keep these essential trees healthy.

You can help too! Please consider donating via the link below, through which all funds raised will go to hemlock preservation, including education, monitoring, and active treatments:

Read the entire article here: https://www.anthropologie.com/stories-community-cook-forest-state-park

Or join the Facebook campaign here: Anthropologie Campaign for Cook Forest Hemlocks

Thank you for your support!

Fallen Giants of Cook Forest

Courtesy of Dale Luthringer, Cook Forest State Park Naturalist:
It is with great regret that I inform you that both the Longfellow Pine & the Seneca Pine succumbed to a microburst on 4 May 2018.
A fast moving microburst came through the area early Friday evening with winds reported near 70 mph. Firsthand accounts state the duration of severe heavy wind in the park was likely a mere 5 minutes. I was in Erie at the time [and] spoke to a park patron on the trails on Monday, who was from Toronto where his high rise work building experienced winds in the 120km/hr range resulting in several windows being blown out.

Many tall pines are down, and to conduct a complete assessment will take time, but a preliminary brief cruise of trails in the heart of the Cathedral note mostly all recently felled trees suffered trunk failures, with most trunk failures being at the 40-60 ft height range. There are still two tall upper 160 ft class pines standing near where the Longfellow was that I haven’t measured in close to 10 years. Maybe one of them might make 170. The Burl King (~11 x ~160), located a stone’s throw NW of the Longfellow appears to have come down in either one of last year’s May 2017 microburst events.
The Cornstalk Pine (~14 x ~135) adjacent to the Seneca Pine is still standing, but appears to have lost some of its crown. I’m hoping the Cook Pine (~12 x ~165) is still standing.

So as it stands, the current tallest pine in Cook Forest and PA is one between the Seneca & Mohawk Trail last measured at 9.6 x 170.5 several years ago. The current statistics I have for the PA state champ would have to reside at Heart’s Content, ANF, with the Heart’s Content Pine, last measured at 12.9ft CBH x 160.5ft high. I will be measuring the Heart’s Content Pine in a couple weeks due to programming being held their soon. It’ll take me some time to see the Cook Pine to check on its current status.

We are looking at getting cross sections for both the Longfellow and Seneca Pine. The Longfellow’s cross section will have to be taken at over 60ft up from its base, but the Seneca’s should prove more fruitful with a cross section that should come from the 20-25ft height range.

At their greatest dimensions, the best I’ve been able to do for both trees were:
Longfellow Pine = 11.2ft CBH x 184.7ft high (previous tallest tree known north of the Great Smoky Mountains
Seneca Pine = 12.6ft CBH x 174.1ft high (previous Pennsylvania State Champ)
Both the Longfellow and Seneca have been in decline for years. The Longfellow was still putting on height, but close to 20% of its bark circumference had rotted near the base. The Seneca Pine was in much worse shape, with thinning crown and near 50% of its bark circumference rotted near the base.

Even in death these massive trees tell a story and serve a purpose. Still, it is sad to see these monarchs pass into the next stage of the forest cycle. Nothing or no one lives forever. Something we all need to be reminded of from time to time.
The mantel for tallest tree in the Northeast now passes to Cook Forest’s sister, the Mohawk Trail State Forest [in NW Massachusetts].