PENNSYLVANIA HARDWOOD FORESTS
A valuable resource supporting a viable industry
As Pennsylvanians, we share a common past – including a valuable resource that is just as important today as it was 300 years ago: Our forests.
You may live on a farm, in the suburbs or a city neighborhood – wherever you live in Pennsylvania, a healthy hardwood forest is not far away. In fact, these forests cover more than half our state. They’re what the original settlers saw when they sailed up the Delaware. When William Penn named it Pennsylvania – literally “Penn’s Woods.” Our forests are our heritage: What we’ve received from the past, and are working – through the science of modern sustainable forestry – to pass on to the future.
Pennsylvania’s forests – and the lumber and wood products they produce – are world–class. Pennsylvania leads the nation in growing hardwood trees. We’re No. 1. We produce one billion board feet of lumber every year. Yet there are still 89 billion board feet in the forests. Despite what many think, the volume of Pennsylvania’s hardwood trees is growing twice as fast as it’s being cut.