"If you care about the environment and care about our local communities, you have to vote Democratic," he said.
Republican leaders said Rendell was playing politics.
"Maybe he thinks it will somehow help the Democratic candidates he's helping to elect," said Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R., Delaware). "I don't think it advances on the serious and important issue of how to maximize the benefit of the natural resource we have here in the Commonwealth."
The executive order would put Rendell's successor on the spot to sign a rescinding order if he decided to lease the mineral rights to any more state forest land.
Senate Republican leaders, committed to not raising taxes, are unwilling to declare the state forests off-limits to more leasing. About 725,000 of the state's 2.1 million acres of forests have been leased - 65,000 acres this year.
John Quigley, secretary of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, said the state could ill afford to lease more land without jeopardizing green certification, which supports the state's sustainable timber industry.
Of about 800,000 acres of un-leased Marcellus state acreage, DCNR says that 180,000 acres are designated as wild and natural areas, 200,000 acres are old-growth forests, 299,000 acres are virtual wilderness, and the rest includes steep or sensitive terrain and recreational lands in the Poconos, and in Western Pennsylvania's Laurel Highlands.
"We cannot keep the ecological balance, we cannot keep the character of our wild and natural lands, if we allow any expansion of drilling," Rendell said.
The moratorium is coupled with two other actions the Rendell administration is taking to protect state forests before the governor exits in January.
