Pa. urbanization shouldn’t overrun primal nature trail - Towanda Daily Review

[WhiteBlaze]

Pa. urbanization shouldn’t overrun primal nature trail Towanda Daily Review, PA - 25 minutes ago More than 10 percent of the Appalachian Trail is within Pennsylvania. From the Maryland border to the Delaware Water Gap, 229 miles of the 2175-mile trail ...

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[emerald]

In Berks County, The Green Diamond, due in part to early efforts on the part of BMECC to promote the concept of a Blue Mountain Wilderness Park and land acquisition by it, NPS, PGC and what's now DCNR, a good argument can be made conditions are better here than in other locations.

I just read our new county recreation plan which lists the A.T. as one of the county's most important assets.

As I've pointed out elsewhere previously to WhiteBlaze readers, Berks County has protected more farmland through conservation easements than all but 2 other counties in the USA. One of the others is Lancaster County, Pennsylvania which abuts Berks. These efforts should mean hikers stand to benefit from protected pastoral viewsheds years from now.

Zoning challenges are not uncommon and more can surely be expected. A lawsuit was recently brought against the township where I live because a buyer and seller want a variance on land zoned agricultural which the buyer wants to develop.

[ki0eh]

I find it interesting that the paper in Towanda, Bradford County, which is up on the NY border in kind of a neutral zone between the "PA Wilds" and the "Poconos," supports zoning downstate to protect a trail. (By the way, Bradford County, PA, is nowhere near the City of Bradford, PA.)

Bradford County is PA's second largest, which makes it about the size of Rhode Island, but it has no long trail within its borders. (The public land there is very disconnected, and there is much less of it in proportion to its land area than its adjacent PA counties.)

I wonder, because I do not know, whether the folks on the Towanda Daily Review's editorial board would support state mandated zoning to create or to preserve hiking opportunities in their own midst.