by Ryan Reed
This past Wednesday (May 20) was PA Native Species Day. It would be hard to find an annual observance in PA more fitting for the DCNR Bureau of Forestry.
The bureau’s predecessor, the Department of Environmental Resources, was conferred jurisdictional authority on native wild plants based on the Wild Resource Conservation Act of 1982, but this responsibility has rested solely with the DCNR Bureau of Forestry since Act 18 was ratified in 1995. All legal statements aside, we are your native plants people.
To have laws in the books regarding native plants is overt testimony of their importance to the quality of our lives. Of the roughly 3,000 wild plant species in the Commonwealth, about two-thirds are native. Of those, about 18 percent are classified as rare, threatened, or endangered, which is one reason why we employ some very talented botanists in the PA Natural Heritage Program.
They keep tabs on these populations and steward them carefully, removing competing invasive plants, fencing specimens, implementing breeding and out-planting programs, and maintaining robust databases.
Realizing this work would be more successful using a collaborative organizational approach, the PA Plant Conservation Alliance (formerly the PA Plant Conservation Network) was born in 2018. The alliance coordinates plant conservation efforts for some of PA’s rarest species across agencies, non-profits, landowners and land managers, naturalists, and academic institutions.
Of course, advancing our mission in conserving native plants is standard procedure for those in the bureau working in all 2.2-million acres of our state forests. Bureau staff in forest health, ecological services, silviculture, rural and community forestry, fire, minerals, operations, recreation, geospatial services, business services, and communications all play an important role in sustaining our forest ecosystem and the plant communities they contain. Our efforts to conserve native wild plants are interdisciplinary and we have lots of partners, but we can always use more help from Pennsylvanians.
Even if you don’t work in natural resources, you can help our native species by planting native plants, removing invasive species, joining conservation groups, donating to conservancies, volunteering, among many other ways. Please consider joining us for our celebration of Native Species Day at the PA Capitol in Harrisburg on Monday, June 1, 2026.
