Pennsylvania state forester Dan Devlin is looking forward to doing more fly fishing in retirement.
Photo: DCNR
You don’t work somewhere for nearly four decades without seeing changes. It’s no different for Dan Devlin.
Pennsylvania’s state forester, and director of the bureau of forestry within the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Devlin manages 2.2 million acres of public woodlands. That means dealing with everything from invasive insects and native wild plants to forest fire and public recreation.
But he’s about done.
Devlin – after about 38.5 years in state government – has less than a month to go on the job. He’s retiring effective March 30. He’s got plans for his down time. That includes putting the fly rod he got for Christmas to good use.
Before then, though, he took some time to talk about with Everybody Adventures about where Pennsylvania’s forests are and where they’re heading.
EA: How have public demands of state forests changed over time?
DEVLIN: Public expectations are very different than when I started.
Our old philosophy was, well, there’s a forest out there and you can go out and explore and enjoy it. Have at it.
But that’s not what people’s expectations are these days. Now, the public expects signage, they expect interpretation, they expect good maps, they expect good trails. The intensity and the expectations and the immediacy of things have really grown tremendously over the years.
That has been, and I don’t know if people realize it, sort of a sea change really.
EA: One hundred years ago, restoring forests that had been clearcut was the challenge. What’s the biggest challenge you see for state forests over the next century?
DEVLIN: Invasive species, for sure. Everyone talks about forest fires in the West. And that’s a problem there. But invasive species in the East is our bane.
And it’s going to be harder and harder to deal with, especially as climates change.
The spotted lanternfly, the hemlock woody adelgid, the emerald ash borer, plus other diseases, not to mention invasive plants. There are a lot of threats. And we’re not going to be able to fight everything equally everywhere. We’re going to have to be selective.
But I’m hopeful that we will be able to contain the situation. We’re not going to stop invasive species. That horse is out of the barn. But what we can do is figure out management techniques to contain it, is a good way to put it.
EA: Privately-owned forests account for most of the woods in Pennsylvania. But they’re becoming increasingly fragmented as a new generation of landowner breaks them up. How does that impact public forests?
DEVLIN: To manage a forest, it’s best to do it on a landscape level. You can account for forest age classes and wildlife species and everything else.
So in my mind, public lands are going to become more and more important, for a lot of reasons. If you can retain large blocks, you can provide connectivity, connect ridges. That’s going to be extremely important down the road.
EA: You can’t talk about state forests without talking about white-tailed deer. You’ve lobbied for better balancing deer and habitat since the 1980s. Do you like where things are at now?
DEVLIN: Yeah, I feel good. We still have a ways to go. But I think we’ve made a difference, is a good way to put it.
I think we’ve told our story a lot about the forest and how deer and the forest are intertwined. We want a healthy forest, we want a healthy deer herd.
I think that message has been resonating. We haven’t reached everybody, obviously, but we’re getting there.
EA: One concern with Pennsylvania’s forests, public and private, is that they’re largely even-aged, and older rather than younger. That’s tough on species like ruffed grouse that need early successional habitat, or young forests. How is the bureau of forestry addressing that?
DEVLIN: The problem is forests are maturing, or mature in cases, depending on what type you’re talking about. And in theory, you should cut those forests at a certain age.
But you can’t because you’ll replicate what was done 100 years ago. The trick is to try and balance that age class distribution and that’s what we’re trying to do on state forest land, is balance it out so that over a 140-year period, you can have various have various age classes distributed throughout the forest.
That’s going to be a journey. But we’re making strides.
EA: How close are we to having a forest that’s balanced, age-wise?
DEVLIN: It’s probably at least 50 years away. The problem is we have a dearth of early succession and we have a dearth of old growth, or late succession. To balance that has to come with age. So it’s going to take time.
My grandkids will see some of the fruits of my labor, but we won’t quite be there yet. We’ll be getting close, though.
EA: A lot of the hunters around today won’t be alive when we hit that balanced forest stage. What are they do in the meantime in terms of finding places to hunt species that need young woods, like grouse and deer?
DEVLIN: That’s absolutely right. But we try to account for that, too.
Our interactive maps point out those places where we are doing cutting, so that should help those hunters a good bit.
But even the early successional stuff we’re cutting now, 20 or 30 years from now, it’s not going to be early succession. It’s going to be pole timber, so it won’t be any good for grouse any more.
So you’ve got to be constantly refurbishing that early successional habitat. That one’s a constant target.
EA: As you wrap up your career, how do you feel about where things stand?
DEVLIN: The forests of Pennsylvania, despite the hemlock woody adelgid, the emerald ash borer, all those things. I think they’re in very good shape across the board.
Forests provide us all kinds of benefits, in terms of water and air and carbon sequestration. Those kinds of things that people take for granted. So I just see, as generations go on, that our forests are going to become more and more and more valuable.
And I think the forestry profession has grown tremendously over that time. It’s broadened its scope.
And for me, it’s been a wonderful profession. At the end of your career, you can look back and say, I think I made a difference, did something very useful, and it’s benefited society.
