On May 9, 1715, Andreas Sandel, a minister at the Gloria Dei Church, aka Old Swedes’ (929 South Water Street), made a note in his journal that “some singular flies came out of the ground.” “The English call them locusts,” he wrote. “When they left the ground, holes could be seen everywhere in the roads
MoreOn a trip to the Meadows at FDR Park at the end of last summer, we got our feet wet. The Meadows is a repurposing of the recently closed golf course at the South Philadelphia park. What were once fairways are now green spaces for play, short-term art installations and homes for wildlife. We were
MoreStephen Maciejewski hit the streets of Center City before dawn one morning last October to look for dead and injured birds, just like he did every morning during fall migration. Maciejewski, a volunteer for Audubon Pennsylvania, walked a set route around the glass-and-concrete canyons, documenting where he found birds that had collided with windows. He
MoreEven in the before-times, I was always looking for an excuse to get outside. My bike commute from Walnut Hill to Washington Square was often the most satisfying part of my day. I slipped out at lunch to birdwatch in Independence National Historical Park. And the weekends found me herping, or doing my best to
MoreOf course the toothy mascot on Chris Muller’s bright orange cap is a beaver. “Oregon State,” he explains. I should have known. We are meeting up on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive at the Fairmount Dam, where we could talk while admiring the view—not of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Fairmount Water Works or
MoreIn November 2019 the City of Philadelphia approved SEPTA’s request to operate a natural gas–burning power plant in the Nicetown neighborhood of North Philadelphia. This approval marked a defeat for the neighbors opposing the plant, who are now preparing for the next phase in the struggle: taking oversight of the new plant’s emissions into their
MoreAfter nearly 40 years of organizing nature walks, park cleanups, tree plantings and trail maintenance, the volunteer group Friends of Pennypack Park disbanded in March 2020. Its dissolution came about after being named alongside the city as a defendant in a personal injury suit, in 2019, filed by the family of a girl injured inside
MoreSometimes referred to as the “voice of the Delaware River,” Maya van Rossum has served as the Delaware Riverkeeper since 1994. To her, protecting the watershed has always been deeply personal. She grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs and returned to the area after law school to protect the Delaware and its tributaries. Van Rossum
MoreTwo beavers sat in the shallows of the Delaware River eating breakfast as I met Jim Fries, project manager at Riverfront North Partnership, for a tour of the living shoreline at Lardner’s Point Park in Northeast Philadelphia. True to their reputation, the large rodents busily stripped the bark off branches they had clipped from willows
MoreAt the start of December, Philadelphia City Council passed a bill to restrict the use of pesticides on public land. Titled “Healthy Outdoor Public Spaces,” the legislation was originally introduced by Councilwoman Cindy Bass to include an all-out ban on synthetic herbicides. This was later walked back to be a restriction in response to criticism,
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