Glenn Dale Citizens' Association

Help Save Ivy Creek Forest

Healthy Forests Are Essential to Healthy Streams and Healthy Communities

The Campaign to Save Ivy Creek Forest needs your help to save a beautiful, mature hardwood forest in the Glenn Dale community and in the upper reaches of the Patuxent River’s Western Branch Watershed.

That precious forest is threatened by a proposed townhouse development that would be nowhere near public transit. In addition to destroying the forest, that project would trigger additional driving, toxic air pollution, and global warming pollution.

The Maryland Department of Natural Resources characterizes roughly half of the Ivy Creek property as Critically Significant for Biodiversity Conservation, and the rest of the property as Significant for Biodiversity Conservation.

At least one stream flows across the property to join the Lottsford Branch tributary of the Patuxent’s Western Branch, which is home to three fish species that are threatened or endangered in Maryland. Together with forests on neighboring properties, the Ivy Creek Forest may provide vital habitat for sensitive species that thrive best or only in forest interiors.

The proposed townhouse development would destroy nearly all of the forest on the site. Any remaining forest would be highly fragmented and subject to stress from destructive invasive species, heat, and severe weather.

As part of the Campaign to Save Ivy Creek Forest, the Glenn Dale Citizens Association and a team of local residents are asking the Appellate Court of Maryland to overturn the Prince George’s County Planning Board’s approval of that townhouse project. They welcome donations and volunteers!

Unfortunately, even as climate change is accelerating, the Ivy Creek Forest is only one of many threatened with destruction in Prince George’s County, and between 2013 and 2018, Prince George’s County lost more tree canopy and forest that any other county in Maryland.

For more information, please write to: saveivycreekforest@gmail.com