Save Ohio Parks releases music video to fight fracking

What do Mama Deer, a turtle, and a duckling have in common with Save Ohio Parks?

They want to educate Ohioans on the dangers of fracking and urge them to demand lawmakers deny permits to drill for oil and gas under Ohio’s state parks and public lands.

Jenny Morgan of Columbus, a singer, songwriter, and environmental and public health advocate, is dedicated to getting every child outside in nature. She has created an original music video called “Stand Up” to educate Ohio families about a new law that requires fracking under Ohio’s public lands.

The music video is uploaded at YouTube  https://bit.ly/440qCVK;  https://www.saveohioparks.org; and https://www.JennyMorganMusic.com. A 20-minute, animated film is slated for release in a few weeks.

“In the song, the forest animals of Salt Fork State Park sing to rally humans to take part in spontaneous, self-directed demonstrations whenever they visit a local, city or state park,” said Morgan. “The animals ask the humans to keep standing up until Ohio leaders stop drilling under our parks and pass a law to protect our parks and public lands forever.”

You can find the lyrics to the song here. (PDF)

Morgan, a preschool teacher, founded the Leave No Child Inside Central Ohio Collaborative, a nonprofit encouraging youth of all ages to get outside in nature.

She is a steering committee member for Save Ohio Parks, a statewide, all-volunteer organization dedicated to stopping fracking under Ohio state parks and public lands.

“Our movement is growing,” said Loraine McCosker of Save Ohio Parks. “Our state parks were created by the state legislature in 1949 for the people of Ohio. They don’t belong to one governor, a small group of supermajority state lawmakers or the oil and gas industry. Special interests should not be allowed to make decisions today that will industrialize our beloved parks and damage our health, the environment and climate for generations to come.”

Salt Fork State Park of Lore City, Ohio, is the first park on the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ list to be fracked. An unnamed oil and gas company wants to frack the entire 20,000-acre park — 425 parcels of land in six townships in Guernsey County — with an unspecified number of frack pads in unknown locations as close as 400 feet from park borders.

Salt Fork and Wolf Run are located over Ohio’s vast reserves of Utica and Marcellus Shale, which the oil and gas industry covets. The Marcellus Shale basin has been ranked by Climate TRACE as second in the nation and fourth worldwide for greenhouse gas emissions. Those emissions include methane from oil and gas fracking operations and transportation.

Climate TRACE is an international coalition of researchers and scientists who access satellite data and AI from more than 80,000 sources around the world to document, inventory, and rank greenhouse gas emissions in real time.

The deadline to submit citizen comments to the ODNR’s Oil and Gas Land Management Commission, which is tasked with permitting or denying fracking, is Sept. 25 for Salt Fork State Park and Sept. 12 for Wolf Run.

Save Ohio Parks urges Ohioans to write personal letters explaining why fracking should not be allowed to Commission.Clerk@oglmc.ohio.gov.

To learn more about fracking in Ohio state parks and public lands, visit the Save Ohio Parks website at https://www.saveohioparks.org.