I am going to speak now for Dysart Woods and for the Buckeye Forest Council's Lands Unsuitable for mining Petition for the watershed buffer zone of Dysart Woods.  The Buckeye Forest Council's Lands Unsuitable Petition should be passed.  Ohio University's cutting of this buffer zone by seven times is unscientific and wrong.  I will also dispute some of the coal industry's claims and show that democracy and truth are on the side of the Lands Unsuitable Petition submitted by the Buckeye Forest Council.

In a study by Reed Noss of the United States Department of the Interior, "An important contextual consideration for conservation on a state scale is the entire geographical range of a community or species.  If the outcrop community occurs only in Pennsylvania but the old growth forest was widespread across the eastern United States, the order of priority for conservation would be the old growth forest first.  The Nature Conservancy recognizes the problem of scale by giving higher priority to global than state rankings.  However, not all state governments recignize trends beyond their boundaries and may be extremely provincial in their decisions.  In many states, characteristic regional vegetation types have suffered massive declines, yet, agencies do not consider them of high priority for protection.  Instead, agencies often focus on the curiosities, such as relict or peripheral community types that were never common.  For example, the natural areas program of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources devotes more attention to bogs, fens and other Pleistocene relics that can be managed conveniently in small reserves as living museums than to the forest ecosystems that once dominated the state.... only some small patches of old growth forest remain in Ohio."

Ohio was dominated by old growth forest that we have a little bit left of at Dysart.  We have destroyed 99.996 percent of the original ancient forest that once covered Ohio.  We have but .004 percent left and Dysart Woods is the only significant tract of its type of mixed mesophytic forest.  It is all we've got.  This is the only place where we can go to and see what forests once were like in Ohio.  This is one of the only places left in Ohio with 100 percent native species -- species that were always here.  It is a place in balance.  It is a forest that must be preserved.

Dysart Woods was protected by the long and tireless campaigning of a St. Clairsville native here, who fought long and hard hours.  John Kinder raised money for the Nature Conservancy in the early 1960s to buy Dysart Woods in 1962, and save it from loging.  In 1966 Ohio University acquired Dysart Woods.  The first coal mining threat came in 1970.  And the watershed buffer zone that we have here today in the Buckeye Forest Council's petition was first presented back in 1970.  So the claims that this coal company is losing billions of dollars in takings is hogwash.  It is wrong.  It is ridiculous.  They have known about this buffer zone for almost 30 years.  And the coal company just acquired the coal rights in 1988.  And yet now their attorney here is claiming and lying that Ohio Valley Coal Company had money invested before 1977.  That again is hogwash and that is wrong.

In 1977, the Surface Mine Reclamation Act was instituted because of the widespread concerns nationwide over the destruction and ravages of the coal industry.  And they have a provision for the protection of lands from coal mining and that is the lands unsuitable petition process.  Dysart Woods meets the letter of the law of this process better than any petition the state has received yet, and two have been granted successful. And I argue better than any other place in the state.

And I quote right from the law, that states, Ohio Revised Code Section 1513.02 (B) authorizes Lisa Morris, Chief of the Ohio Division of Mines and Reclamations to "designate as unsuitable for coal mining natural areas maintained on the registry of natural areas of the department of natural resources...publicly owned or dedicated parks and other areas of unique and irreplaceable natural beauty or condition, or areas within specified distances of a ... public park.  Such a designation may include land adjacent to the perimeters of such areas that may be necessary to protect their integrity."  Clearly, the watershed is critical to protecting the integrity of Dysart Woods.  The Buckeye Forest Council's legally delineated watershed buffer zone as has been known since 1970 by the coal company and the Division of Mines and Reclamations must be passed in full.

And in fact the Ohio Division of Mines and Reclamation in 1988 called for the preservation of this very buffer zone.  And I quote right from the chief of the Ohio Division of Natural Resources from a press release issue on March 2 of 1988, "as director of the Department of Natural Resources I want to make sure that nothing is done to harm Dysart Woods, a precious part of Ohio's natural heritage."

Then-Chief of the Ohio Division of Mines and Reclamations Tim Dieringer called for the protection of the entire watershed buffer zone in 1988.  This watershed buffer zone is effectively what the Buckeye Forest Council has submitted and that the ODMR is considering today.  So the ODMR has already asked for this and must uphold this decision that was made in 1988 when there was massive concern for this save buffer zone, and this same forest and protect the full watershed.

The comments made by the anti-environmental contingent that has been paid by Ohio Valley Coal Company, who have claimed that in 200 years there aren't going to be any old trees left because these trees are dying are part of their misinterpretation of fact; the lies that Ohio Valley Coal Company is using to destroy Dysart Woods.  Because in fact there are 200 and 300 year old trees that will replace the 400 and 500 year old trees as they die of old age.  This is a continual forest.  Old growth forest perpetuates itself.  The 200 year old trees will replace the 400 year old trees in 200 years.  But the lies that you hear from the coal company -- the misinterpretation of fact -- that is what is blinding the process and skewing the truth.

Lastly, the truth.  We have irrefutable scientific evidence that coal mining can affect the hydrology that can affect forest.  We have all kinds of documentation as has been submitted in both the Buckeye Forest Council and Ohio University's Lands Unsuitable Petitions showing scientific facts that longwall mining within the buffer zone could destroy Dysart Woods.

And, for democracy.  There have been more than 8,000 people in the state who have submitted petitions and letters to the Ohio Division of Mines and Reclamations calling for the preservation of this watershed buffer zone.  The people know the truth, and the people have spoken in large numbers.  And I am going to submit almost 800 more signatures today on top of the more than 8,000 letters and petitions that have already been submitted to the Ohio Division of Mines and Reclamations, calling for the passage of the Buckeye Forest Council's Lands Unsuitable Petition to protect Dysart Woods, a critical resource in perpetuity.