We notice a new phrase cropping up a lot lately in the arguments of NIMBY types and other anti-growth advocates – “forest fragmentation.” It sounds ominous, of course, and, therefore, our friends on the other side of the natural gas debate have seized upon it. There’s nothing negative that doesn’t make them go wobbly in the knees, after all. Recently, some of those folks have turned to a USGS report on Bradford and Washington Counties for evidence natural gas development will somehow leave Pennsylvania’s forest devastated and all lovable furry creatures scurrying for protection under ever smaller clumps of trees that remain.

You’ve got to hand it to them. They’re great marketers, if nothing else, and know the image of a threatened Bambi still resonates with a public that too often knows very little of what’s really happening. There is some fragmentation, to be sure, but it would seem to be less with the forests than in the minds of those who would look only at statistics supporting their position, while ignoring the bigger patterns contradicting those claims.

http://eidmarcellus.org/marcellus-shale/forest-fragmentation-natura...