“We're building a quilt. I call it a quilt of state forest land.”

Our host, Marci Mowery, chats with Rick Hartlieb, who is the district forester for the William Penn Forest District, covering nine counties across southeastern Pennsylvania. When he arrived in 2008, the district managed 902 acres. Today, that figure stands near 3,000, the result of patient land acquisition that Rick describes as building a "quilt" of public forest in one of the Commonwealth's most urbanized regions.

The district's existing holdings are ecologically distinct and historically layered.

Goat Hill Wild Plant Sanctuary, on the Mason-Dixon line in Chester County, protects a serpentine barren ecosystem with globally rare plants and lepidopterous insects found nowhere else.

Little Tinicum Island, Pennsylvania's only tidal state forest land, shifts between 80 and 200 acres with the tide, carrying history from its role as one of the Delaware River's earliest colonial ports, where ships staged offshore before passengers were permitted ashore, through a World War II dredging operation that reshaped its shoreline.

Newer acquisitions, such as the Wertz Tract, Gibraltar Hill, Buck Hollow, and Mullan Hollow along the Horseshoe Trail, continue expanding what the district can offer.

Sustaining these places requires year-round vigilance. Rick's team treats 220 ash trees across five sites on a three-year rotation, the only living ash remaining in the surrounding counties. Hemlock woolly adelgid, beech leaf disease, stiltgrass, and development pressure fill the rest of the calendar.

The Highlands Conservation Act has funded roughly half of the district's acquisitions. Volunteer groups, cycling clubs, and a friends organization at Goat Hill take care of much of the rest.

What animates Rick most is a legacy question. That is, how to set up forest land close enough for a King of Prussia resident to reach in thirty minutes, built to outlast any single manager who comes after.

Key Topics:

• Goat Hill Wild Plant Sanctuary and the Serpentine Barren (3:28)
• Little Tinicum Island: Tides, History, and Big Ships (6:21)
• The Wertz and Gibraltar Hill Tracts (10:12)
• History in the Landscape: James Wilson and the Lenape (16:16)
• Managing Invasive Species and Tree Disease (18:31)
• Accessible Trails and the Upcoming Delmont Tract (23:49)
• Community Partners, Volunteers, and the Green Gym (26:20)
• The Future of the District (27:59)
• What Rick Hopes Visitors Know About This Work (31:36)
• Best Places to Visit in the William Penn Forest District (37:14)

Resources:

• William Penn Forest District: https://www.pa.gov/agencies/dcnr/recreation/where-to-go/state-forests/find-a-forest/william-penn
• William Penn State Forest Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamPennSF
• Spanish Language Map: https://elibrary.dcnr.pa.gov/GetDocument?docId=3849450&DocName=FD17%20William%20Penn%20Public%20Use%20Recreation%20Guide%20Spanish%202021.pdf
• Friends of the State Line Serpentine Barrens: https://www.facebook.com/p/Friends-of-the-State-Line-Serpentine-Barrens-100064575826052/
• View from the Hopewell Fire Tower: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8DiQYlVa1o

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We're providing a resource to the public that no other public landowner does down here, where you can primitive camp wherever you want to go. We have trails that they're open to the public, but yet they're still relatively unknown, so you have that kind of that wilderness experience here in Warnersville, Berks County, being able to expand that through our other kind of new and up and coming acquisitions is really exciting.

Imagine a place where stress fades, fresh air fills your lungs, an adventure awaits around every corner. Welcome to Think Outside, the podcast that inspires you to explore, connect, and embrace the outdoors. Welcome to Think Outside with the Pennsylvania Parks and Forest Foundation. I'm your host Marcy Mallory, and today we're joined by Rick Hartley, who is the district forester in the William Penn Forest District. Rick, welcome.

Hi,

wonderful to have you here with us. For our listeners, could you place us in the landscape? Where is the William Penn Forest District?

Sure, so we cover all of southeastern PA, we cover the nine southeastern counties, so from Northampton, Lehigh, Berks, Lancaster, down to Philly.

That's a pretty big area to cover.

Yeah, about three hours from northern point to the southern point, without traffic,

without traffic, that's pretty critical. Now, when I think of that area of Pennsylvania, I don't think forests. Can you give us a little bit of a background on what makes the William Penn State forest unique in the landscape of Pennsylvania's forest?

Sure, so we, we've been settled here for over 400 years, so our tracts of forest land are are scattered, they tend to be small, but we still have a lot of trees here, so even Lancaster County, in the heart of Amish country, you know, and their, their urban growth, we have over 160,000 acres of forest land, just in Lancaster County, Berks County has almost over 400,000 acres of forest land, so you know, even though we're an urbanized forest district, we have a lot of forest land in the area, most of it's privately owned, but we are fortunate to have some really awesome public spaces of forest land too.

How does the forest district interact with those privately owned landscapes?

So we provide technical assistance with private forest landowners to be able to help advise them on the health of their forest, and we want to make it better for the next guy, whether it's their son or daughter or grandkids that are going to be inheriting the property, or whoever manages that property down the road. We want to be able to help them set it up for success for wildlife habitat, timber products, recreation, the watershed quality protections, kind of all of the cool things that forests do for us. We help us as private landowners in getting to that point.

That's awesome. So, if somebody has a land, they reach out to the forest district, and you'll provide assistance,

right. We have a team of service foresters, and there are professionals that their primary job duties is working just with private municipal landowners, and we have with three foresters that split up those nine counties.

Now, you mentioned that you also have some publicly owned land that is Bureau forestry land. Can you talk about those tracks? I understand they're, they're scattered around those counties.

Yeah, so we're an actively growing district. When I started here in 2008 we had 902 acres of land, and now we're about 3000 acres of land, doubled in size twice, which is super cool. And we have, we have land in Lancaster County, Chester, Berks, Bucks, Chester, and Delaware.

And are these tracks open to the public?

They are. Yep, you can access our state forest land and be able to recreate just like you would on any other state forest in the Commonwealth.

What makes these lands different? I mean, I'm very familiar with the Goat Hill Wild Plant Sanctuary. So, let's start there. Can we talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, so you know, we're building a quilt, I call it a quilt of state forest land, where you know we had some older ones, and then we're building on to Jason lands that are up for sale around those, and then when new properties in the landscape come up for sale, then we work with our conservation partners to acquire those as well. The Go To Hill Wild Plant Sanctuary is on the Mason-Dixon line in southern Chester County, and that is. It's a plant sanctuary because of the globally rare plants on the serpentine bearing ecosystem, so there are plants and lepidopterous insect species that only live on the barrens globally, so we have a pitch pine forest there with the serpentine rock ecosystem and a sea of green briar that helps to support a lot of other flora and fauna that kind of depend on that, and just to the west of there, we recently transferred the Rock Springs Preserve from Lancaster County Conservancy over to DC, and our Bureau of Forestry as well. So we now manage 900 acres that go to hill and 178 acres on the Rock Springs Preserve, similar ecosystem, but the plants are different. And then we have, so we're working with researchers to see if the other critters that are there are also slightly different within that really unique ecosystem.

Why do you think the plants are different, just on either side of the October creek?

I don't know, probably land use history, you know, if one was heavily grazed or if the so they're not acidic soils, they're very alkaline soils, and that releases the micronutrients, so they used to use these areas to mine chrome and nickel and arsenic and some really hard, hard, heavy metals, and as those become available at the plants, it stunts the plants, it promotes other things from growing, so there may be some kind of underlying mineral and heavy metal issues that affected the plant community. We're also the northern range of some plants, so we have some of the largest stands of southern red oak, which is not a common tree in Pennsylvania. We have post oak, blackjack oak, so southern species that are kind of have that northern migration and have that hold up there because it's a slightly warmer climate with the serpentine bedrock so close to the surface,

it's such a unique ecosystem, and always a little bit warmer, as I found when I, when I'm visiting it. Well, you have another very unique holding, I'm thinking of Little 10 and Come Island. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Sure, so we are well back, you know, with Good Hill as well, so it started off as a donation that saved the property from being mined back in the early 80s, and the Nature Conservancy had worked to facilitate that, and they had maintained their other, their own lands, and then in 2017 we acquired a donation from the Nature Conservancy to expand our good hill by 120 acres, which allowed us to do prescribed fire and some serpentine management on fields that they had worked on in the past. Now we're also working with an Amish man across the street that has an agricultural lease, so we're the only state forest in Pennsylvania that's growing pumpkins, so that's that's a neat little talking point there, so Little Tinicum Island, we also acquired around in the early 80s as well, so that was historically in the 1600s that was one of the first stopping points as a small fort before you got into the marshlands around Philadelphia, and then it helped to support Philly's version of Ellis Island, so passengers would hang out there, close to the island, dock knew the island before they were permitted to get shoreside, and then in World War Two, they needed to dredge the river to get naval ships up to the Navy Yard for the war effort, so they conducted, they built a dike system on the island and pumped all the dredge material from the river into the island to let it kind of drain out and capture the sediment, and then that was also then donated to the Commonwealth in the 80s after all of that industrial effort had happened, so now it's our only title, state forest lands within our commonwealth system. It's a freshwater tidal estuary. At high tide, we're about 80 acres. At low tide, we're about 200 acres, and it's actively growing. So, the nice sandy shoreline is on the Jersey side, and the tidal mud flats is on the Pennsylvania side, just because the way that the river current goes, and we are actively gaining ground upstream, and we're losing ground downstream. So, my 17 years involved in this forest, the island has changed a lot, where trees and like duck blinds and things that were there on the island, they're no longer there now. No, it's water because the ground's gone, but we're able to walk on, you know, kind of mud flats that we were not able to walk on before.

I would imagine, too, because of the nature of the island, that you have some pretty unique bird species there. Yeah, my experience. On the island is standing there and watching big ships go past, which is one of the only forest districts where you can do that.

Yeah, that's correct. So we had a heron rookery there for a few years. We see bald eagles, we see a lot of neat, neat birds. It is on the takeoff runway, the Philadelphia International Airport. So over your head you see a commercial airplane every 90 seconds, that is not the best place to have bird sanctuary. So it's the FAA and the wildlife folks kind of work within that region, then to map and identify where populations are at, and they work with the game commission to move nesting areas or control anything that way, there's there's no impacts in that commercial aviation,

but it is a

neat wildlife area. You do see all sorts of critters there, here in Turkey, and other animals find their way there, whether they swim there or get across on the ice, but there's there's definitely no animals that are out there.

Now you've, you've acquired some recent properties over the past 510 years. Can you talk a little bit about those?

Sure. So, our the first large acquisition is our George W Works track, and that started with the transfer from the state hospital system, where they had owned lands in western Berks County, George W. Words had owned the farmland where the hospital was built in the 1890s and he advocated to the legislature, like we need to build a hospital to care for our sick residents here, because of the clean mountain there and water, and there was a hotel industry up in the mountain on Berks County, South Mountain, every county has a South Mountain. So, in Berks County, South Mountain, there was a hotel industry there. He's like, you've got, you know, everybody's coming to the hotels, let's build a hospital and bring our patients here. So, they did that. He sold the farm to the state, they built the hospital. He also then built the factory, which made the bricks to sell to the state to build a hospital. So, he was a good businessman, but he was also in the conservation movement too, and he's like, you know, you guys got the hospital, we need to be now able to protect that watershed as we're giving those folks that clean mountain water, so they went and procured all the lands within that mountain valley to protect the watershed, which became the first 400 acres of our Wurtz track, so that happened between 1895 and 1908 which was the birthplace of our conservation movement in Pennsylvania. So I'm just speculating, but one would assume that an influential guy with folks in elected officials in Harrisburg, they were all in that same circle within the conservation movement, so that was the cool thing to do, and he was able to kind of reach onto that after our first 400 acres. Then we had three other acquisitions within that same watershed of private landowners that were looking to sell, so we added another 150 acres to that, so the works track is about 650 acres in western Berks County. Some really cool habitats, some mature forest stands that are approaching 150 years old. So when they built the hospital in 1915 and you look in the aerial pictures behind the hospital, there's an intact forest there. So, in 1915 there was an old forest behind the hospital, so we're putting that at 1860 1870 So, that's that's neat. You're huge trees, a really neat ecosystem there, and that's still

protecting the watershed as well. I mean, so I imagine that the people that live in that water shed or have some very nice drinking water.

Yeah, we have a nodding trillion and a plant sanctuary there, so that's a species of special concern that we're working with. We have a lot of neat kind of micro habitats there that you see in upstate PA. We have sugar maple stands, we had yellow birch, we have a couple of hemlocks hanging on, so it's a neat little kind of hidden gem there in Western Berks. Around that same time, we also then acquired the Gibraltar Hill Track, which our initial acquisition was 234 acres, and that's close to 400 acres now as well, with additional acquisitions, and that was purchased from a developer that had approved development plans to build housing across the mountain, on top of the mountain, at the toe of the mountain, and we were able to capitalize on kind of the downturn in the market, and housing wasn't hot, you're still paying taxes on it, and it was able to be available to purchase them through our conservation partners,

and what type of activities are available there for people if they visit.

We have about, we have about three to four miles of stacked loop trails on that mountain, so they're dual use for hiking, biking, and horseback riding, and we do have two primitive campsites that are. There, so once they forest lands, you can camp, you can primitive camp wherever you want, whenever you want, for one night with no permit. We have to manage that slightly differently, because you know our tracts of lands are they're less than 1000 acres, so if everybody did that wherever they want, whenever they wanted, that could cause a lot of impacts on the landscape, so we create primitive campsites. It's typically on a charcoal hearth, so a flat spot was with no rocks, and we put a picnic table and a small firing in metal, so that way, if you're interested in primitive camping, we can guide you there, and that way kind of the impact is at one place.

Would those sites be located on your, your public use map. If somebody had a,

we have primitive campsites on our Gibraltar Hill, works track, then our Buck Hollow Track.

And where is your Buck Hollow Track?

That is just north of French Creek State Park, and it straddles the Horseshoe Trail. So, off of Buck Hollow Road, we have 100 acres that the Horseshoe Trail goes through, and then if you hike south on Horseshoe Trail towards the direction of French Creek State Park, you go through a piece of private lands for about 10 minutes of hiking, and then you're on to another 100 acre piece of state forest land. Our latest acquisition are Mullen Hollow Track on Mullen Hollow Road, so if you continue on the Horseshoe Trail, once you leave our Buck Hollow Track, you hike for about 15 minutes, and then you enter another 60 acre piece of state forest land, which not on the trail of the Horseshoe Trail itself, but there's the remnants of the Wilmington Northern Railroad, which has this really cool dry laid sandstone culvert arch, where the headwaters of the Hay Creek go underneath the railroad bed, so to see the craftsmanship that those guys did over 100 years ago is really, really neat.

I imagine you have a lot of history in your park, your parks, I'm seeing your forest, based on where you're located. I mean, that, as you said, 400 years of Europeans in the area.

So, Mullen Hollow, when we were doing that, that project, there was a house and a barn and some other outbuildings there, and they were old, and they were very, very dilapidated, so there was no salvaging any of the structures themselves, and they had gotten hit on a historical review because James Wilson had owned that property, and we think that the buildings were constructed in James Wilson's times. I didn't know James Wilson when we got the dome, he's a signer of the Declaration of Independence, so that's an important figure in our history. Right, turns out he actually lived in a more affluent house in the Birdsboro area, and he was a land speculator, like all of those other guys were, to be able to park their money and build up the region, so he had owned the farm, but he never actually lived there, so there you know some neat history there is behind that.

Do you have indigenous history too in some of your tracks?

The most developed indigenous history that we have will be on our upcoming Delmont track, the northern Montgomery County, or along the Unani Creek, which is formerly called Swamp Creek. It was assigned Unani Creek name in 1916 and kind of in tribute to the Unani component of the Lenape indigenous folks that were here. There's verbal history that has been passed down of of those ties that's on our list to do some more investigating and see exactly where ceremonial grounds were at, where living grounds were at, and go from there.

Yeah, important history to interpret. Yep, yeah. Now, the William Penn Forest District was the first, and I think it might still be the only one that has a Spanish language public use map

that's correct,

so we'll make sure we link to your public use maps in the show notes, so that people can find their way around the forest district.

One of them with our public maps is, as soon as we get them printed, they're instantly out of date because of how active our acquisition program is, so like that's a good problem to have.

Yes, that is a good problem to have, particularly in an area that has a lot of pressures, and not just the pressures of people, but people, the infrastructure that are required for people, but I imagine you're also managing for invasive species storm impacts, it's how do you, as a forest manager, how do you manage for all these pressures on these lands that you're responsible for?

So we try and prioritize the best that we can. Our work is very. Seasonal, and that begins with our seasonal employees, so our staff grows by a third in March, and those folks are on board then until a week or two before Thanksgiving, so the lion's share of our field work happens during during the spring and summer and early fall months, and then we have to work in our spring fire season and our busy kind of technical assistance season with private forest land owners, but we have two forest technicians and their primary new job duties are working just on state forest land and we prioritize throughout our seasonal workload, so we value our forest health projects pretty high, and right now our team is working on our Zimmerman Natural Area in Berks and our Johnson Natural Area in Bucks for emerald ash borer control, so we have the only living ash trees within that entire region of those counties, because we have treated the ash rambled ash borer, so amongst five different locations we treat about 220 ash trees on a three year rotation, so that takes up almost the entire month of June, and then after that, then we'll pivot to following up on stilt grass control that we didn't get to with pre-emergent before other beneficial native plants are flowering. In July, we in August and early September, we get the Pennsylvania Outdoor Corp, and we work with them with volunteer projects to do recreation improvements on our trail system, and so it's just a constant revolving door. When we get new properties, we have an onboarding program where they may come surveyed, but that's just a stick on a corner. You have to connect the lines, so we then we have to survey the boundary lines, paint them, get to know the site inventory to trails that are there. Are those trails acceptable? Do we want to create new trails. How do we plan for that? Who's doing that work? Are we working with scouting groups, we're working with the outdoor core, we're working with other local volunteers, and to try and come up with a good game plan before we put the open sign out on a new piece of property. That way, when the public does show up, we have a level of expectations of ourselves that we're able to provide for the public, that way we're pretty consistent across the board. Then,

yeah, well, I'm very excited to hear that you've preserved that many ash trees. I mean, it breaks my heart when I think of the loss of the ash tree, because it's such a magnificent tree. So, thank you for doing that.

We're tinkering with beach, but the research hasn't caught up yet, so we don't have an answer for beach leaf disease. We participated in some beach treatments, we've done some inventories to kind of see how things are going. I don't have as good of a feeling with the outcome for beach, just because of how hard and how fast that issue came, but that's one, and our, we treat about 12 acres of hemlock trees as well, and now that's on a kind of more of an extended timeline, about every five to seven years, we have to do those treatments for hemlock wooly adelgid and hemlock elongate scale, and those are actually on the 10 acres of state forest land that we own in the middle of French Creek State Park, so where our maintenance shop is, is the Hopewell Fire Tower on top of Williams Hill, so the actual hill itself was Williams Hill, and there are dry land hemlocks on top of that mountain top, so we treat those, and they have a really unique association with pink lady slippers around there, so when you go up there in the spring, you see the lady slippers and native azaleas kind of all in bloom at the same time, so we're they coexist with

awesome, but you reminded me that there years ago we created a virtual you from your fire tower, so I'll make sure that I link that as well. Marcy would never go up in the

tower. Well, the steps are repaired, so we'll take you up anytime.

Marcy will still not go up in the fire tower. Give me, give me a nature build overlook, not a human build tower. My

very first time up in the fire tower, I did a ride along when I was in high school, so it was in 2001 and Todd Brininger was a service forester here, and he took me up in the fire tower, and that scared me one way from another, so I

yeah, I applaud people that just like skip up the steps and are like, oh, what a great view. Yes, I'm sure accessibility is really important in the work that the foundation does, and I know that the Bureau of Forestry has, you know, a commitment. To recreation, it would be outdoors for all. So, how are you accommodating, you know, accessibility and removal of barriers for people in your district?

Sure, so you know, you mentioned the Spanish language map, that's one from a language barrier. We're going to be putting a highlighted focus on accessible trails and environmental education on our Delmont track, so that was a, you know, it's a former scout camp, by, you know, we, we should have closing on that by the end of the year, and it's 700 acres, we're going to round up, so it's close to 700 acres in Montgomery County, close to where the people are at, it's has relatively flat areas with a lot of some really awesome potential, so you know we're brainstorming some super cool plans for environmental education as a training area there to be able to have loop trail systems for folks that have accessibility needs to be able to be able to provide all that there in the context of the state forest, 20 minutes away from where you live here in southeast PA, so I think we can stack a lot of the super cool amenities together. There are other tracts of land, we so like the worst tract off of our texture mountain road area, off of that parking area, we had done a trail improvement to be able to provide a, it's still a stone road, essentially, but it's a hardened trail, so that if you had a mobility permit and you wanted to access it and on or be able to get into the property, you can get away far enough where you don't hear the traffic and the slamming doors in the parking lot, like you're not able to get all the way to the back side of it, but you can get in the middle of it, and you can still get that experience then of being out in the woods that we wouldn't be able to otherwise.

Okay. Nice. Great. Thank you for doing that. You mentioned that you utilize some volunteers in some of your projects. Can you talk a little bit about what the role of communities and partners play in the stewardship of your public lands there in your forest district?

Sure, so not only are they an integral part of the kind of the work that happens, but we are a best kept secret here in Southeast PA. So, as the community gets to know us, that we're not the game commission next door, that we're somebody different, that we do things a little bit different than state parks and gang commission. Having those volunteers as a local sound board is really important too, like, you know, local residents, they know that the history, they know the area, being able to kind of speak on our behalf is important. We have a friends group, or the State Line Serpentine Barons Friends Group, they work had done work with us in the past, primarily on Good Hill. They're also familiar with the Rock Springs area from when the Conservancy had owned that, so they're an important player down there on our other tracks. We have local bicycling clubs, and they'll work with our recreation forester if there's trees down to be able to help clear and maintain the trails that they use as they bike. We have other folks that, you know they like to primitive camp, and they'll help us out if there needs to be any kind of light maintenance on the trail to get from the parking area to the primitive campsite, and then we also have some other individual volunteers that just like to get outside for outside recreation and whack brush with the machete and do the outside thing, like that's perfect, you know, like we've got an opportunity for that, that's a cool volunteer opportunity, you get your exercise, we get some trail work, everybody wins,

we call it the green gym, you've expanded the the volume of land owned in the forest district, two fold, but a little bit more. So, what excites you about the future of the district and opportunities that are going to be presented?

Sure, so you know, a few years ago we surpassed District 14, so we are no longer the smallest state forest. So that's that's always an important designation to have there, you know, we're number 19 now, but with our acquisition program, we are, we're providing a resource to the public that no other public landowner does down here, where you can primitive camp wherever you want to go. We have trails that they're open to the public, but yet they're still relatively unknown, so you have that kind of that wilderness experience here in Warnersville, Berks County, being able to expand that through our other, you know, kind of new and up and coming acquisition is really exciting, where you can you. Living King of Prussia, and go a half hour north, and have that experience. You don't have to drive up the Sullivan County to do that. You can do it right here in the southeast. So that's our long-term legacy, is to be able to, as we acquire these lands, set them up for success. You know, I'm not going to be here forever. My team's going to move on. And how does the next cohort of managers kind of work with that land bill and provide that for the public, so we're at a good place now to be able to brainstorm some of those cool ideas and set them into place, and as we get new lands on board and we build these community relationships, they're going to help us kind of hand in hand move that forward too.

Yeah, and I, you're saying about the success and the unique recreational opportunities, but again, my mind keeps going to all the other values that a forest provides that are benefiting the people, the cleaning of the air, the protection of the water, the calming nature of forested ecosystem also important,

protection of the land in general. The half of our acquisitions had building plans approved by the Township Planning Commission, so you know we were fortunate that the land owner sold that, and it is now preserved public open space forever. When before it could have been a subdivision with like we've been seeing plagued everywhere else here in Southeast PA, so you know it's important to be able to take advantage of that, all those opportunities that we have. Kind of the biggest watershed movement of that nature for the land protection for us is the Highlands Conservation Act, which is federal dollars, and so 50% of our acquisitions have come through that, and that's not available statewide either. That's a pretty restricted zone, kind of along the 81 corridor, 81 and 78 corridor in Pennsylvania. So the fundings here, the opportunities are fine, it can be create some stressful situations, like, you know, okay. Well, that's cool. And I get the lands now. What are you going to do? And that's where having a, an awesome and competent team comes in to help kind of carry things forward too.

And your ability to have communication, I mean, it sounds like you're doing a lot of communicating with with neighbors and the public, and that's that's critical, yep, as well,

and sometimes we do projects, and like things look different, where they look brown and it doesn't look good, and be able to communicate on why we're doing that. At the worst track, in 2016 we did an ash tree salvage, so we cut 40 acres of trees across from people's houses, like, so that looked different, and then a storm came and blew down the rest of the trees that we left standing, so it looked terrible when that happened. But now here we are, 10 years later, and the trees have regrown, they're 30 some feet tall, and to the layperson, you wouldn't know the difference, so

yeah, the

heels, it's, and we give it a little bit of a help and kind of guide it, and you know that's a cool legacy that we can lead to.

Yes, and I'll tell you, impacted ash trees concern me. We know how unpredictable they are if they haven't already collapsed, and the slightest of winds or the a good exhale could could topple them, so there is a process in a restoration. Sometimes we're removing things that are invasive that people like, you know, like multiflora rose might be something that people have an attachment to, but it's not providing the habitat that you want. Is there anything you really hope visitors understand about the work that your team does behind the scenes? You mentioned that people don't necessarily know that these, these places are in the landscape, that they have access to them, that you are actively managing them. Is there anything else that you'd like them to know about these places or about the work of a forest district?

I think, as people get to explore them, knowing that not only that it's there for the public's use, but kind of the quality of that use as well. So, I'll use Berks County for an example. You know, you want to go outside of recreation in Berks County and Central Berkshire, Western Berks, Blue Marsh Lake, and that's probably where you're going to go gravitate to. So that's an Army Corps of Engineer area, and it sees a lot of people, from runners, hikers, hunters, bicyclists, dog watchers, you know, you've got everything all crammed into one place, centered around the lake and the trails and the water and all that stuff, but 15 minutes away is the worst track, where you can go on a might be a little bit more of a rugged trail, but you have that quiet experience, and you might see people, but you're not going to see 500 people, you know, in a two hour span, kind of before lunch. Time, kind of thing, so you'll be able to go out there and have more of your thoughts to yourselves. That's something that all of our tracks kind of carry forward, and you know we're trying to promote them, but yet maintain that quiet character as well.

Yeah, I find that something I crave right now is that quiet time in the woods, so is there a moment in the field, a conversation, a sight, a sound that has stayed with you throughout your career as a, as a forester,

not necessarily on state forest land. So, in my, I started as a service forester, so I got to, you know, play outside on other people's woods, and you know, help provide them, give them guidance and advice, and it was less planning and budgets and that kind of stuff. Then, so I had a landowner in Southern Lancaster County, and they were super jazzed about the work that they were doing, and they found an oak tree there, and it was the only oak tree that they had on their property, and they had just read Doug Palmy's books, the title, The Nature in Your Backyard, or

yeah, he has several. Yes, yes, I'm familiar with this. Was

a right, so that concept is oak trees are phenomenal because they, they support over 600 different species of Lepidoptera, and the birds that you wanted to have need to have the caterpillars to eat and all that kind of stuff, so this oak tree that was there was all craggly and like it wasn't doing anything, it was over talked by some maple trees, or they were kind of uninspiring, so they wanted to know like how they could promote it and get more trees, so like I cut it down, you know, like the only tree they had, like cut the oak tree down and cut the brush around it, and give it some room to grow. So, as a oak tree enthusiast, and that was the only one they had, of course, that was kind of a hard pill to swallow. So they did it, they cut it down, and they cut the competition, and they put a little deer fence around, and, like, you know, we recommended, and oak trees resprout, so you cut them down and they resprout, and now it's got room to grow. And back in the fall, so that was about 2010 or so. Back in the fall, I had gotten a random text from these folks, and I haven't heard from them in years. They had a family picture there with their grandkids, then standing next to this tree, which was like this big now, over towering and taking up the canopy, so it was still the only oak tree they had there, but now it was the mature, majestic tree producing acorns, doing its oak tree thing, and they were able to make that whole like intergenerational connection, so that was really neat to be able to, you know, like we had that conversation years ago, and we kind of parted ways, and we did our things, and then they kind of all circled back on it. So knowing that you can have an impact on properties and on families years after you've left that site, that's super cool. So I think that's one of the things that's always going to resonate

with me. Yeah, that's a great story. I love that. As we wrap up, is there a one place in the William Penn Forest district that you'd encourage every listener to visit?

Well, it depends on what you're into. If you're into water adventure sports, then take your kayak down to Governor Prince Park in Tinicum Township and float across the river, and you can access the island, you know, if you want to experience kind of what it's like to be in a Pine Barrens in Georgia, but here in Pennsylvania to go to Goat Hill, and in August, you know, it's super hot, but you're going to see some really neat, neat, unique flowering, find some things there if you're into kind of the large older growth, not older growth, but older growth trees, you know, the works track that Warners Mills, a neat place to, to kind of explore and visit.

Well, thank you. Is there anything else that you'd like to share that's that's on your mind, that's, you know, almost interested? I'd

invite anybody, if you have, if you've got questions on things to visit here for the district, give us a call, send us an email, you know, we still reply to that. It's, we don't receive as many calls and inquiries as we did before COVID, like things have changed, but we still have here people to talk to and be able to provide some really good advice on how to get out there and explore and visit the site, and you know, all of our staff, we're from the area too, so you know we know the area, so if you're a visitor from another corner of the state, there's lots to do here in Southeast PA, besides, you know, our little corner of the world, and we can help guide you to the other public spaces that are out there, and some of the other neat things that are to see,

that's excellent. Well, thank you very much, Rick, for joining me today. This was very fun conversation, and very informative. Thank you.

All right. Thank you.

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