In Philadelphia, there was once a large public park where humans had previously intervened but where nature was reasserting itself. Residents flocked there to leave the noise and rigidity of the city grid behind and bathe in the wild unruliness of trees and meadows. This was a world unto itself, but not for long: one
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I am desperate for American chestnut trees to make a comeback, even though I know that it’s not happening anytime soon. I long to see our woods as they were 150 years ago. The forager in me misses the chestnuts I never got to gather from the forest floor. As Jessie Buckner writes in her
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By Meg McGuire and Katherine Rapin In December 2023, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency made a bold move for the Delaware River, proposing to raise the water quality standards in the estuary for the first time since the Clean Water Act of 1972. This upgrade would increase requirements for dissolved oxygen levels among the foundational
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Like a human starting to experience Alzheimer’s disease, a deer in the early stages of chronic wasting disease doesn’t look all that sick. You’d have to spend some time with it to notice anything amiss. But in both illnesses, once it starts, there is no stopping the degeneration of the brain tissue and further outward
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Coverage courtesy of Delaware Currents. All in all, it was a good week for the Delaware River. Two significant developments point toward possible improvements in water quality in the urban section of the river — approximately from Philadelphia, Pa., to Wilmington, Del. Both hinge on the problem of ammonia pollution and related to that, the
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Six-year-old West Philly native Idris McClellan looks very much at home running through Awbury Arboretum on a recent fall day, but he’s actually there on doctor’s orders. McClellan is part of Prescribe Outside, a collaborative program of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), Awbury, Let’s Go Outdoors and the U.S. Forest Service to encourage outdoor time
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On a brilliant October morning in FDR Park, a small group coalesces around a striking figure. Sporting a cap of tight platinum curls, “The Thursday Murder Club” earrings and floral overalls that would provide perfect camouflage in a perennial garden at high season, Lady Danni Morinich welcomes aspiring foragers to her two-hour exploration of wild
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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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I ventured into the Wissahickon along with Grid photographer Rachael Warriner on an unseasonably warm October afternoon to take a look at some beech trees infected by beech leaf disease (BLD). They were easy to spot. The veins of a beech leaf run out diagonally from a line down the center, dividing the leaf into
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It’s said that Isaac Newton was inspired to develop his theory of gravity when an apple fell on his head. But what happened to the apple after it hit him? Did he leave it there, uninterested in its value, and start working on his theory? Or did he pick it up, gather a few more
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Windows of any size can kill birds, but those at Sister Cities Cafe in Center City were particularly lethal. “It’s essentially a glass cube with three sides that are full windows top to bottom,” says Stephanie Egger, a volunteer with Bird Safe Philly. “The problem here is twofold: its transparency, so the birds can see
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