Open Letter to Members of the General Assembly
Re. Funding Healthy Outdoors for All Program
6/12/2024

The partner organizations of the Growing Greener Coalition, on behalf of our hundreds of thousands of supporters and together with hundreds of allied organizations across the Commonwealth, urge you to ask your leadership to include a one-time injection of $80 – 100 million into a Healthy Outdoors for All Program for the 2024-2025 budget year.

Specifically, the Growing Greener Coalition seeks a focused boost in state investment in local capital projects to achieve the rehabilitation, upgrade, and strategic expansion of local park, trail, and other outdoor spaces. These projects will attract and leverage substantial local philanthropic dollars and volunteer energy. Such projects, which are well-proven to deliver substantial and long-term benefits to communities, for the most part have not had access to the robust federal funding available for so many other efforts.

Investment results will include:

  • Rehabilitation, restoration, and upgrading of infrastructure heavily impacted by increased public use of parks, preserves, trails, greenways, neighborhood gardens, and other public open spaces during both the pandemic and post-pandemic era.
  • Strategic expansions of facilities to relieve overuse of facilities strained by the increased demand and expand benefits delivered to the public.
  • Greater outdoor recreational opportunities for disadvantaged communities, whether urban or rural.
  • Closure of gaps in volunteer and local government owned and managed trails and trail networks.
  • More Pennsylvanians getting the health benefits of recreating in safe and friendly spaces.
  • Expansion and improvement of quality wildlife habitat.
  • Reductions in flood damage and improved water quality.

The investment will be made via state grants to local governments and nonprofits that are vetted through DCNR’s well-established, objective, accountable system.

For more information, please reach out to the people of the Growing Greener Coalition’s partner organizations, including the following contacts:

Audubon Mid-Atlantic
Jim Brown, Policy Director
jim.brown@audubon.org

Chesapeake Bay Foundation
Julia Krall, PA Executive Director
jkrall@cbf.org

Conservation Voters of PA
Katie Blume, Political & Legislative Director
katie@conservationpa.org

Foundation for Pennsylvania Watersheds
Deb Nardone, Executive Director
dnardone@thefpw.org

Lancaster Farmland Trust
Jeff Swinehart, President & CEO
jswinehart@lancasterfarmlandtrust.org

Natural Lands
Kelly Herrenkohl, Vice President, Communications and Engagement
kherrenkohl@natlands.org

PennFuture
Patrick McDonnell, President and CEO
mcdonnell@pennfuture.org

Pennsylvania Environmental Council
John Walliser, Senior Vice President
jwalliser@pecpa.org

Pennsylvania Parks & Forests Foundation
Marci Mowery, President
mmowery-ppff@pa.net

Pennsylvania Recreation & Park Society
Tim Herd, CEO
herd@prps.org

Sierra Club PA Chapter
Jen Quinn, Legislative and Political Director
jen.quinn@sierraclub.org

Rails-to-Trails Conservancy
Tom Sexton, Northeast Regional Director
tom@railstotrails.org

The Conservation Fund
Kyle D. Shenk, Northeast Region Director
kshenk@conservationfund.org

The Trust for Public Land
Owen Franklin, PA State Director
owen.franklin@tpl.org

WeConservePA
Andrew M. Loza, Executive Director
aloza@weconservepa.org

Western Pennsylvania Conservancy
Cynthia Carrow, Vice President
ccarrow@paconserve.org

Download a PDF of the letter.