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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The Trust for Public Land has released its 2023 edition of ParkScore, which rates and compares park systems for cities across the country. Philadelphia is pretty much where it was in 2022, ranking 31 out of the 100 most populous cities in the country this year versus 32 last year. Behind that ranking are several
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The fourth annual #BlackBirdersWeek 2023 will take place nationwide May 28 through June 3, with events intended to raise the visibility of Black birders and build community. #BlackBirdersWeek took flight in 2020 as a result of social media discussions within the #BlackAFinSTEM community following an incident in New York City’s Central Park in which a
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The renovation of the Cobbs Creek Golf Course hit a small hurdle on May 10 as the Cobbs Creek Foundation sought approval from the Philadelphia Art Commission of the next phase of its construction, a pumphouse and reservoir for irrigating the golf course, with the commission asking the foundation to return at a future meeting
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On April 15 the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education announced that it had parted ways with executive director Michael Weilbacher. Reached by Grid for comment, Weilbacher, who had run the organization since 2011, responded by email with a statement. “I am so proud of what the Schuylkill Center’s staff accomplished over the last 12 years
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Nicole Chandler has tended Overbrook’s Morris Park for so long that, when she talks, one imagines the scent of clean earth. “The City had written the park out of its 2005 budget,” says Chandler, 53, who lives across the street from the 64-acre site. “They were … going to let it naturalize, which means let
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The biggest muskie that Eric Hinkley has landed in the Schuylkill was almost four feet long. Muskie (short for muskellunge) are possibly the most challenging (and awesome) game fish to catch in North America. The long and muscular ambush predators sit and wait for food to swim by, but their discriminating eye makes it hard
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Everyone is invited to a baby shower taking place from June 22 to 23 at Independence Mall in Philadelphia. There’s no need to bring gifts. Just be ready to advocate for Atlantic sturgeon, which will be hatching right about then a mile to the east, in the Delaware River. The shower will be held by
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Without life to animate it, to hold it in a characteristic pose or to propel it through the air, a dead bird on the sidewalk can look like a rag or clump of dead leaves. But when I got a little closer to the mystery clump next to the Ciocca Subaru dealership in Gray’s Ferry,
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If there’s one thing all Philadelphia’s mayoral candidates can agree on, it’s that Mayor Jim Kenney botched the water crisis that wasn’t. On the heels of a near-crisis that called into question Kenney’s emergency response and the City’s ability to protect its drinking water system, the candidates to succeed Kenney in office gathered Wednesday night
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On February 23, 2023, Philadelphia’s Department of Parks & Recreation (PPR) released the Philly Tree Plan: Growing Our Urban Forest. The product of two years of outreach and engagement that gathered input from more than 9,000 people, the plan attempts to chart a course to expand the city’s tree canopy while balancing the benefits of
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