Action alert: Save Maryland’s Forests!

We are destroying the ‘lungs of the earth,’ the natural filters that keep our communities and our families healthy. Development is cutting down about 2,000 acres of forest a year in Maryland, this despite a state policy that says we should be dramatically increasing our tree canopy. The loss of forest is costing us billions of dollars, and jeopardizing our health and our environment. We are allowing developers to cut forests at an alarming rate even as we are trying to reduce pollution to the Chesapeake Bay and its rivers and streams. The solution is a state law that has long been on the books, but needs strengthening: the Forest Conservation Act. The law is not meeting its intended purpose, to minimize forest destruction by development. We must amend the law to save more forest from clearance, and to require higher rates of replanting when those trees must be cleared.

The Maryland Senate passed a bill that would create a task force of environmental and business groups to recommend changes to the Forest Conservation Act that would update it so we no longer lose trees without replanting them.

Use the form below to write to your Delegate and tell them “More Trees, Please!”

About Eliza Cava

Eliza Cava is the Nature Forward Director of Conservation, where she supervises our policy, advocacy, watershed community science, and conservation outreach work, and supports Woodend restoration as a demonstration landscape for the region.
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