Oct 24, 2017 15 min read

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Cindy Dunn doesn’t just oversee Pennsylvania’s state parks. She is an avid kayaker, hiker and fisher. Dunn is also, as she puts it, an avid “birder.”

Her goal is to visit all 121 state parks while secretary of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. And she’s been to most.

When the Senate unanimously confirmed her as Gov. Tom Wolf’s appointee in 2015, Dunn was in a sense heading home. She had previously worked at DCNR over two decades under three governors.

Dunn, 59, also had been president and chief executive officer of PennFuture, an environmental advocacy group, since 2013.

In her previous stints at DCNR, Dunn worked as deputy secretary of conservation and technical services; director of the Bureau of Recreation and Conservation; and director of the Office of Education, Communications and Partnerships.

Dunn first joined DCNR in the mid-1990’s as director of community relations and environmental education.

Dunn served as the executive director of Audubon Pennsylvania from 1997 to 2003 and was the state program director for the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay for 10 years.

The Caucus: What are your goals as secretary?

Dunn: Access to parks is something I’d really like to talk about. We are charged with maintaining and providing parks and recreational access for all Pennsylvanians, which sounds easy. When Doc (Dr. Maurice) Goddard was secretary, his way of doing it was to put a state park within 25 miles of every Pennsylvanian.

… We have an obesity crisis in the state, so getting people out and walking, transportation access to work. One of my favorite little trails is between Lewisburg and Mifflinburg, the Buffalo Valley Rail Trail. You see Amish people using it to get around because you have a rail trail, safer to bike along than the highway in the valley.

Transportation to work is becoming (an increasing) use of these trails. And of course people think of that in an urban setting like Pittsburgh, where with the Great Allegheny Passage we have a lot of commuters. And we have a lot of commuters on the Schuylkill, but it’s equally important in a rural area. If people can be off a road and biking from point A to point B on a rail trail, they’ll do it.

The Caucus: As an agency, what are the biggest challenges you face right now?

Dunn: Well, budgets are tight. We were all participating in a complement ceiling, which just means when somebody retires, we can’t fill every single position. We don’t lose the positions, but we can’t fill them all. So we are asking our staff to do more with less. I have to say that one of the best things about this job, for me, is being able to lead this group of staff. I feel humbled, frankly, by their commitment to the work. They step up and they have a public service mentality so they will put themselves out to serve the public.

The Caucus: How many employees work at DCNR?

DUNN: We’re down to 1,230 … It doubles during the summer season. We bring in a lot of wage seasonals, so we have an additional 1,083 wage seasonals that are everything from lifeguards at pools to wage rangers, to wage maintenance. We attract really high-quality wage staff because people like to work in parks and forests, so if you are a wage person, you’re only hired six months a year. You would think we might lose a lot of good people to permanent work, and we do lose some. But a surprising number come back summer after summer after summer because they like working at a park or forest. So we have the benefit of having a great work environment for our field workers. I think that allows us to really attract good people again and again.

The Caucus: So the challenge like corporations or anything else is making due with less?

Dunn: Yes. And that’s our challenge in government. The governor has asked secretaries like me to keep the public-facing stuff intact, really look at public service as you make decisions about these complement ceilings. So for us, even the public-facing side of it, is what we are trying to cover.

The Caucus: What are the big initiatives right now?

Dunn: One is engaging with youth. If you look at our agency mission, it is to conserve and maintain the public lands and resources in perpetuity. To do that, we’ve got to be cultivating the next generation of conservationists and workers. So we have this program that is funded by (the Department of) Labor & Industry. You probably remember the old Civilian Conservation Corps. And then there was this Pennsylvania Conservation Corps. Pennsylvania Conservation Corps was cut during the ’08 recession and we wanted to build a program to teach youth skills, working on parks and forests and engage them in our mission, so we worked with Labor & Industry.

We used a fund that they have – a work skills program fund – and we hired the Pennsylvania Outdoor Corps. So we have 14 crews out this summer doing work on parks and forests. These are young people, 15 to 18 years old, from communities of need. These are both rural and urban communities that are put to work on parks and forest lands for six weeks. Then we have an adult crew, ages 18 to 25, who have a 10-month job working on parks and forests. Those young adults get true work skills. They build things. They’ll be able to take their friends and parents to a structure they built and they have a real – a Keystone Project, we call it.

The good news is there’s all this mythology out there about young people, that they don’t want to work, that they don’t want to get away from their device. … The only challenge we have is, we under-predicted how fast they could work and how serious they could work, so we have had to pick up the pace in laying out the projects. They get to them faster. They work harder. We have been completely impressed. So it really seems like this next young generation will be good stewards, will care about our mission and care about the outdoors. They just need opportunity. That has been really gratifying for all of us.

And of course we do programming in parks for young people. We do teachers workshops. We do classroom programs. We have a staff of seasonal and full-time environmental educators. We teach watershed conservation.

The Caucus: You’ve worked both in the nonprofit sector and in government. As an advocate for the environment, where do you think you have the bigger ability to make an impact? Is it in government or the private sector?

Dunn: It’s a different approach. In government you have staff and resources and ability to connect with a lot of people. Our mission in DCNR is to connect with 13 million Pennsylvanians. … I love the reach with the state government work.

The Caucus: How many do you connect with?

Dunn: We get 40 million visits to the state parks. That’s not to say “visitors,” because some people come back. Take Presque Isle, the one we were just talking about. Some people go there everyday. They go out there to run. So we have these counters and we have ways of estimating 40 million visits.

It has over a $1 billion impact on our economy. It supplies 13,500 jobs to Pennsylvania. So it’s a big economic driver.

In fact, we’re working with DCED tourism. We can feature outdoor activities, parks, and just bring visitors in. Pennsylvania’s biggest attributes are its natural assets. Tourism is our second-biggest industry. Yes, some people come to see the Pennsylvania Dutch. Some people come to Hershey. But a lot of people come for the parks and forest and trails. … So we are like the asset and the product and the tourism helps us bring in visitors, but we also do a lot of our otherwise social marketing.

The Caucus: How about the passport program to encourage people to go visit state parks and have them stamped?

Dunn: Yes. A lot of people take that very seriously. They get their passport and they want to go and visit every one of the 121 parks. That’s something that makes us very rich as Pennsylvanians. It’s part of our commonwealth. I mean, we all own these parks and that’s one thing we try to emphasize. All Pennsylvanians own these parks and that’s wonderful. The challenge to us is, we’re managing these on behalf of all Pennsylvanians, as per the Environmental Rights Amendment from our friend Franklin Kury.

So to do that, we have to talk to Pennsylvanians.

… As we look out to the future, we have to forecast: what are Pennsylvanians going to want in their park system? We have seen a neat resurgence in camping. We have had incredible fall weather. We are seeing fall camping on the increase. Our campgrounds are seeing banner attendance the last several years. It’s kind of good. We’re not going out of style, let’s put it that way.

The Caucus: Can you talk about the 95,000-tree initiative?

Dunn: This is our water initiative. If you think about DCNR, we were (the Department of) Forests and Waters. That was the agency in the past. The original forests of Pennsylvania were conserved mainly for water because the sediment was running into the towns and communities and streams and so the initial land that was conserved for state forest land was to conserve water.

But now we have an initiative where we’ve got to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. … The DCNR felt that we could … support an initiative to plan streamside buffers. They are called riparian buffers. I say “streamside” because a lot of people don’t know what riparian means.

We decided to make it a statewide program because every waterway in Pennsylvania would benefit from having forested banks.

We are providing grants and technical assistance and were convening a lot of nonprofits to help plant buffers. We have service foresters. These are foresters on our staff who focus on helping private landowners. We have a grants program through our recreation and conservation. We have directed a portion of our money and PennVEST has put in $1 million a year of their money to install these buffers on private land.

Our program is not limited to agriculture. We are certainly hoping a lot of farmers will take us up on it, but it could be community parks. We can put buffers on other private lands, like a landowner wants a buffer, we can put it on corporate campuses. We are looking everywhere. There is no stream that wouldn’t benefit from having a buffer. It helps move the pollution flowing into it and helps shade the stream and everything else.

The Caucus: Why do you think that is important, having the public involved?

Dunn: The natural resources are common resources to all people. This is true in the environmental side like air and water as it is on the parks and forests. You can’t manage something for the public without public engagement. Without them understanding its value and also weighing in with their voice. So that’s been my mantra in public service work.

The Caucus: Governor Ridge had pushed that separation of DCNR based on a recommendation from Maurice Goddard, I believe, right?

Dunn: Yes, right.

The Caucus: Did you know him?

Dunn: I do, yes. My father worked in the Department of Forests and Waters. He was an engineer in the waterways group under Goddard and he would tell Goddard stories around the dinner table. That was a different day. Goddard established a lot of the parks we have today. My dad said Goddard would have out maps of states and say, “We’re putting a park here.” And put his finger to the map.

The Caucus: Regardless of what might be there?

Dunn: Yeah, right, right. It was a different day and age. Goddard was driven by vision, you know. He wanted a park within 25 miles of every Pennsylvanian. Today, I’d like to say that adequately meets our mission, but it doesn’t. A lot of people can’t get to that park. So besides the transportation I’m working with Leslie on, we’re working to provide recreation close to home. We have a community grants program.

We have a goal. It’s a lofty one. To have a trail within 15 minutes of every Pennsylvanian. People’s lives are very busy. A lot of working parents, single-parent households. People have structured lives, so the Goddard vision of today is a trail within 15 minutes of every Pennsylvanian.

If you are in the densest part of Philly, that means you should be able to walk blocks and blocks and blocks to get to a trail. If you were in a rural valley like when I grew up, it means you can throw your bike in a pickup truck, drive to the next valley and get on a rail trail. … But to see how close we are, we took 5 miles as a surrogate for 15 minutes and just mapped out… I mean it’s a rough estimate.

… It showed where we had trail deserts, where we still need to focus. So we are setting out to chip away at that goal.

The Caucus: What do you personally like to do?

Dunn: I was out kayaking on Sunday at Pine Grove Furnace State Park. It’s a small lake, and so it was a nice easy paddle. I actually paddled around a little and just kind of soaked up some sun thinking this is going to be one of the last nice days. I hike. I like hiking. Like I said to Terry on the way over, “I fish.” This is not a big fishing year for me. Last year I got out much more.

The Caucus: Fly fish or …?

Dunn: I fly fish. I catch a lot of hemlocks. I wouldn’t put myself out there as a highly skilled angler. Terry had me up on Penn’s Creek. I had a lot of fun. I don’t think I caught anything. …

The Caucus: You were talking about Maurice Goddard at the dinner table. Right?

Dunn: Yeah, I did. And my dad, because he was one of the engineers. He would, on a weekend, take us to see a project and we’d go camping at a state park, picnic at a park. … I felt very fortunate that way. A lot of kids – I think that’s why this youth initiative is so important – don’t have that growing up. So we try to make it easier for people who don’t have that.

We have this first-time camper program. Say it’s a mother and kids. Wants to go camping but doesn’t have the equipment, doesn’t have the confidence. Our environmental educators will do first-time camper nights, and we have the equipment. We have it in rubber boxes. We set it up. Our naturalist shows them how to do it and they roast marshmallows and all that. We have fun.

The Caucus: What’s your favorite state park?

Dunn: Oh, that’s hard to say. So here’s what I’d say: “It’s the park I’m in.” There’s some truth to that. I was at Kinzua Bridge State Park a couple weeks ago with the governor and at that moment in time, that’s my favorite park. That place is incredible.

The Caucus: Have you been to all of them?

Dunn: That’s a good question. I need to sit and analyze that. I have not been to Allegheny Island. So I’ll have to remedy that. Every once in a while, I’ll look and think, “Have I been there?”

The Caucus: You need the passport.

Dunn: I have a passport. But I’m not as good at getting it stamped as I need to be. I’ll tell you, I’ve been to the vast majority of them. They are all great. They are all different. There are some that really are remarkable and some that are just real neat because they are serving so many people the way they are.