Pennsylvania Legacies

PEC Program Manager Rachael Stark is on a mission: visit all 63 of America’s National Parks before her 30th birthday this July. With just a few weeks left, she’s off to Alaska to cross the last few parks off her list. Before heading out, Rachael spoke with PEC’s Derek Maiolo about the journey so far.

It's easy to generate excitement around building new miles of trail. More difficult, but arguably more important, is maintaining existing trails. To help under-resourced trail managers get a handle on the complex challenge of maintenance, PEC's Trails team developed an extensive guidebook and companion app for collecting and analyzing data, allocating resources, and planning for long-term sustainability. Brett Hollern and Zhenya Nalywayko, who helped create the still-unreleased toolkit, explain why it's already drawing national attention.

April is a big month for the environment. From Earth Day, first observed in the same year PEC was founded, to Arbor Day (April 25), to Celebrate Trails Day (April 26), to International Dark Sky Week (April 21-28), there's an occasion to celebrate almost every aspect of the work PEC and our partners do.

As we wrap up our April donor campaign, we're sharing excerpts from past podcast episodes that relate to some of our favorite Earth Month holidays. To support PEC's mission and share your love for nature and the outdoors, please consider making a donation at pecpa.org/give.

You know what geothermal energy is. But did you know that Pennsylvania has enough to heat and cool our homes and businesses, power our industries, and meet our carbon-reduction goals in just a few years? The best part: PA's long history of oil and gas production means we already have much of the data, infrastructure, and knowhow needed to seize the opportunity AND keep skilled energy workers employed. The authors of a new report out of Penn State explain how.

When it comes to public awareness of invasive species in the northeastern U.S., spotted lanternfly is the undisputed media darling. But in PA, the big picture is both more complex and less visible -- calling for a collaborative and landscape-specific approach to management. Amy Jewitt, an expert with the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy and a member of the Governor's Invasive Species Council, explains why the PRISM (Partnerships for Regional Invasive Species Management) model is working in other states, and how Pennsylvania could replicate that success.

Three Rivers Waterkeeper is a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit whose mission is to steward the region's three main rivers and their tributaries. That work led to a remarkable discovery that reveals the resiliency of nature.

On today's special holiday-themed episode, we dig into some of the holiday season's evergreen questions with a Pennsylvania Christmas tree expert, such as what's better for the environment — a real or a fake tree? We also discuss the local Christmas tree industry, its threat under climate change, and efforts to develop climate-resilient conifers that could, quite literally, save the future of Christmas.

As living ecosystems that can sequester carbon and use it to feed a hungry planet, farms have an important role to play in the fight against climate change. Emerging sensor technologies originally developed for healthcare applications hold the promise of equipping farmers with robust realtime data on the health of their soil.

In Pennsylvania and beyond, the food industry's economic importance is rivaled only by its environmental and climate impacts. Pittsburgh-based Chef Christopher Galarza has made it his mission to green up the food system by building more energy-efficient commercial kitchens, promoting environmentally friendly and community-supporting food production, and educating restauranteurs and their customers about why culinary sustainability matters.

Building collisions kill more than a billion birds each year in the U.S. and Canada. A product-testing program at Powdermill Avian Research Center in southwestern PA is helping manufacturers make windows more visible and less hazardous to birds, but what will it take to implement bird-safe design throughout the built environment?