In 2021, Ken Conly, director at large for the Philadelphia Canoe Club, was paddling a stretch of the Schuylkill River near the Flat Rock Dam north of Manayunk when he noticed something afoot. A resident of nearby Andorra, Conly says that section of the river has traditionally been “neglected,” with trash accumulating along the river
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Anyone could get bored stuck inside all day, and cats are no exception. A vast industry caters to the idle feline. A quick check at Chewy.com turned up thousands of cat toys, 140 of which are interactive, as well as 695 options for cat furniture such as trees, condos and scratching posts. Some cat owners
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Building on Philadelphia’s history as the “Garden Capital of America,” conservancy groups, landscape designers, urban horticulturists and backyard growers in our region are taking part in a revolutionary shift in gardening. By incorporating native plants — the trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants that flourished here over 200 years ago — into local landscapes, these practitioners
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At Houston Meadow it’s easy to forget the city. Grasses and wildflowers cover the hillside that slopes into the wooded ravine of the Wissahickon Creek below. Bees and butterflies dance across the flowers. Over at Three Springs Hollow in Pennypack Park hikers can walk beneath towering oak and tulip trees while wood thrushes serenade them.
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On a Sunday afternoon in early June, Jorge Oliveras and Jackie Colon packed up their beach chairs, filled a cooler with snacks and brought their children out to Devil’s Pool. They sat amid a loose constellation of rocks at the confluence of Wissahickon and Cresheim creeks, watching their kids swim and splash around, basking in
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On a brisk and sunny March day, the dry grass of the south Whitby Meadow stood tall as a few dozen volunteers gathered with hand tools, potted shrubs waiting to be planted and bundles of live stakes — thin branches cut from black willow and silky dogwood trees intended to take root and sprout along
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Are you searching for places in the area that allow you to enjoy what the outdoors has to offer? As summer heats up, many of us are looking for an urban (or rural) oasis that will let us briefly escape the hustle and bustle of city life to enjoy the natural environment. While popular locations
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A red-bellied turtle basking on a log next to a pocket of wetlands at Point Breeze on the Schuylkill River doesn’t know that it is threatened, legally speaking, or that its home is tiny compared to the once-expansive ecosystem that used to stretch far beyond its current territory. The controversy over a planned warehouse development
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It’s hard to know which battles to choose. We are confronted with such an overwhelming list of environmental problems (global warming, biodiversity loss, air pollution, environmental racism, sewage flooding into our rivers…) — not to mention all the interrelated social ills such as systemic racism, poverty and unabating gun violence — that we can excuse
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In the fall of 2020 Maria DiMauro, an artist who lives in Old City, opened her Facebook account and clicked through pictures of warblers, vireos and catbirds that had died by crashing into Center City windows. She saw more than just dead birds. The pictures had been taken on October 2, 2020 by Stephen Maciejewski,
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