On my way out of the Cobbs Creek Environmental Education Center in October, I stopped to pick through the leaves around the American persimmon trees at the top of the driveway. It was a little early in the season, with plenty of fruit still on the tree, but I found a few little blobs of
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The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education has announced that it is “indefinitely suspending its request for proposals to develop the Boy Scout Tract,” a 24-acre wooded parcel across Port Royal Avenue from the center’s core grounds in Upper Roxborough, according to an email sent on Tuesday, September 6, by the center’s executive director Mike Weilbacher.
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In September 2020, SEPTA’s bike policy was amended to allow bikes on trains during peak hours because of low ridership during the pandemic. This policy allowed residents to create a multimodal network of transportation that wasn’t available in pre-COVID times. In December 2021, that amendment was rescinded, and bicycle access has since been limited to
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The Mural Arts Institute is hosting a two-week series of events from September 12 through 22, looking at the transformative work happening at the intersection of community-based cultural practice and environmental justice. The 2022 Arts & Environmental Justice Symposium invites local, regional and national artists, activists, cultural workers, environmental justice advocates, organizers, scientists, scholars and
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Researchers at Monmouth University in New Jersey want your mice for a study of the genetic and microbiome differences between mice in urban versus rural settings. Although house mice (Mus musculus) stick pretty close to humans wherever they live, the ones in cities might have different diets or territory sizes from their country cousins, according
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Equipment used to clear-cut the South Philly Meadows at FDR Park was disabled by vandalism, according to a report by 6 ABC News. Six unspecified pieces of equipment were damaged some time between Wednesday night and Thursday morning. According to the report, crews say that sugar was put in diesel tanks and that wires were
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The Da Vinci Art Alliance is in financial distress and needs help staying afloat, according to co-directors Samantha Connors and Bryant Girsch. “As many organizations post-COVID-19 lockdown, we’re struggling financially,” they announced via press release. The Alliance dates back to 1931, when 16 Italian immigrant artists and collectors founded the organization at a time when
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As the inhabitants of Philadelphia roast under the unrelenting sun of July and August, it is easy to dream of shading the entire city with solar panels in an effort to do something useful with the radiation that otherwise renders the daylight hours insufferable. Philadelphia Solar Week, August 15–19 is a start, with Solarize Philly,
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The Philadelphia Department of Public Health’s Air Management Services, the division responsible for monitoring air quality in the city, is holding a hearing on Wednesday, August 10 at 6 p.m. for public input into proposed revisions to its regulations. The regulations, which haven’t been updated since 1981, would expand the list of toxic chemicals monitored
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Spring Garden Street, which runs from river to river, is currently a fast but miserable route for a cyclist to cut across Center City. Much of it is unshaded and exposed to the sun, and the bike lane isn’t protected by anything but a white stripe on the asphalt. At the eastern end, cyclists who
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On July 11 Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf vetoed Senate Bill 275, which would have prevented local governments from enacting natural gas hookup bans. Senate Bill 275 is part of a national lobbying effort by the fossil gas industry to head off increasingly popular local initiatives to shift buildings away from fossil fuel use. Washington, D.C.,
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