The lure of Powdermill: Nature reserve vs. gas reserve!

A pond near the Powdermill Avian Research Center in the Powdermill Nature Reserve in Rector.

Powdermill Run, the mountain spring stream that runs through Powdermill Nature Reserve in Rector.


Jane Netting Huff remembers well her father's search for the perfect nature reserve.

"He walked all over Western Pennsylvania looking for places," said Dr. Huff, 71, a Virginia Tech biology professor whose late father was Graham Netting, the former director of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History who sought to create a field station near Pittsburgh in 1948.

"He wanted a place where scientists from the Carnegie could do their research, a place that would be protected."

He settled on a tract of land around a stream called Powdermill in Westmoreland County that was owned by the Scaife and Mellon families, longtime museum patrons.

In 1956, Dr. Netting convinced them to donate not only the original 1,100 acres, but money to buy additional land. It eventually became the internationally known, 2,200-acre Powdermill Nature Reserve, now revered for its exceptional quality stream, 49-year-old bird banding program, and nearly unrivaled diversity of regional flora and fauna.

As proud as she is of her father's role in creating Powdermill, today Dr. Huff, like many researchers who have worked at the site, is worried. For about two years, like just about every large landowner in Western Pennsylvania, the Carnegie has been contemplating whether it should allow drilling of natural gas from the Marcellus Shale deposit a mile below Powdermill's surface.

"I think that would be an unmitigated disaster," Dr. Huff said.

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