Public Forests of Maryland Back to Photo Gallery

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Today, less than half of Maryland is forested, and the public owns only 15% of these forests. Public forests are the only ones the public can preserve to protect wildlife, plants, fish, and water resources. Generally, private landowners can do what they want with their forests. Protection of biodiversity requires adequate habitat, and in particular forest habitat, for many species.

Forests provide a wealth of services to all of us for free. They take carbon dioxide out of the air and supply the oxygen we need to breathe and to live. Forests, and the debris on a forest floor, allow rainfall to sink slowly into the earth, recharging underground aquifers and keeping streams running long after rain events. Without forests, streams flood with each rainfall and then quickly dry out when the rain stops. The flooding of streams with each rain event erodes the stream channels, and allows large amounts of pollutants and sediments to flow into streams, rivers, and bays.

The Savage River State Forest is the largest public forest in Maryland and encompasses about 53,550 acres of land in Garrett County. Science tells us we should preserve areas of 50,000 acres or larger for biodiversity protection. Most state parks and many forests are too small to preserve extensive biodiversity. Even large forests like Savage River State Forest are fragmented into small pieces by roads, private land holdings, and activities such as logging that are detrimental to biodiversity protection. State Forests are also open to a variety of recreational activities such as camping, sightseeing, fishing, hunting, and trails for snowmobiles and all terrain vehicles.

This map shows Western Maryland and parts of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Virginia. State Forests are shown in green and the gray areas are private forest land. The forest furthest west in Maryland is the Potomac/Garrett State Forest. As you come further east you will see the Savage River State Forest, just west of the city of Cumberland, and the Green Ridge State Forest just east of it. The areas shown in dark green within each state forest are the Wildland areas. Wildlands are fully protected from destructive activities such as logging, roads, and motor vehicles whereas the rest of the state forest is not.

Wildlands in the Savage River State Forest are highlighted. Each Wildland is from 650 to 2700 acres in size. Private properties and roads fragment the Wildland areas. Only 11,135 acres of the 53,550 acres forest is fully protected as Wildlands. The dark green area shown as Crabtree is not a Wildland, but an old growth forest in need of permanent protection. Biological connections between Wildlands and state forests need to be made to other forests both in Maryland and adjacent states. Biological connecting corridors are recommended by biologists to get more biodiversity protection from highly fragmented areas. Marylands GreenPrint Program describes this type of program for the state, but fails to describe the need for biological corridors between Maryland's forests and those in adjacent states.