PA Environment Digest

Three Pennsylvania projects are among 40 projects in 24 states to receive TogetherGreen Conservation Innovation Grants totaling $1.4 million dollars.

Winners were selected from applicants nationwide for their innovative approaches to inspiring, equipping and engaging people to tackle environmental problems and take advantage of opportunities in their communities.

Photo: Students from William Penn High School, York, working in Audubon PA's Audubon At Home Program.

The projects are the first to be funded by the new TogetherGreen Initiative created by Audubon with support from Toyota.

“Our biggest environmental problems can’t be solved unless we engage people from every ethnic, racial and economic community that makes up America and help them realize their power to make a difference in their own communities,” said Audubon President John Flicker. “These TogetherGreen Innovation Grants help local groups to engage people and to start achieving tangible conservation results at the same time”

More than 120 applications were submitted in the grant categories of water, habitat and energy conservation. Each winning team combines a local Chapter or unit of Audubon’s large national network with one or more community organizations to better advance the twin objectives of public engagement and environmental enhancement.

“These grants are the cream of a very impressive crop,” said Brainerd Foundation Executive Director Ann Krumboltz, one of many leaders from the academic, environmental and non-profit communities who served on the grants selection committee. “They will no doubt get people informed, involved and helping to make a make a difference.”

Selected proposals receive grants ranging from $68,000 to $5,000, with lower amounts earmarked for further planning of promising initiatives. The grants leveraged an estimated $4.5 million in additional matching and in-kind support.

The grants are proving especially important as non-profit groups brace for the impact of the troubled economy.

“Since the launch of TogetherGreen, we have been so pleased with the excitement surrounding the volunteer efforts and grant applications,” said Patricia Salas Pineda, Group Vice President, Toyota Motor North America. “Today’s announcement is an important step in the mission of TogetherGreen to show that we all can make a significant difference in improving our environment.”

Audubon and Toyota launched the five-year TogetherGreen initiative in the spring of 2008 to fund conservation projects, train environmental leaders, and offer volunteer and individual action opportunities that significantly benefit the environment.

Community volunteer days have already begun in over 40 cities across the country and www.TogetherGreen.org helps users take conservation action and share and celebrate conservation success stories.

The TogetherGreen initiative and grants programs are funded by a $20 million Toyota gift to Audubon, the largest grant in the conservation group’s long history.

PA Audubon At Home Program

Audubon Pennsylvania wants Pennsylvanians to discover the wild side of their backyards. Suburban sprawl and conventional land use choices pose the greatest of all threats to Pennsylvania bird populations – but it doesn’t have to be that way!

Audubon Pennsylvania and their many partners throughout the state will use a TogetherGreen Innovation Grant to help homeowners and renters create backyards that are havens for birds, wildlife and people.

The project is multi-faceted and will help make Audubon Pennsylvania’s Audubon At Home activities more robust, while establishing a stronger local presence throughout the state. The Audubon At Home in Pennsylvania project will train 25 new Audubon Advisors, who in turn will train volunteers around the state to help people manage their yards as habitat.

Three demonstration projects will highlight the benefits of sustainable landscaping. And more than 500 properties throughout Pennsylvania will be enrolled in Audubon’s online Bird Habitat Recognition program.

By broadening its on-the-ground presence, Audubon Pennsylvania hopes to directly involve thousands of community members in conservation action, and ultimately provide a successful model that can be replicated by the other 26 state offices in the National Audubon Society network. More information is available online.

Three Rivers Rain Garden Alliance

Every now and then, Pittsburgh drowns in an unpleasant problem that’s been occurring for years. TogetherGreen will give a big boost to a collaborative project to tackle an out-of-sight problem that comes into clear view with as little as one-tenth of an inch of rain or snow – the inability of sewers to handle storm water overflow.

With their TogetherGreen Innovation Grant, Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Environment Council, and 3 Rivers Wet Weather Demonstration Program will launch the Three Rivers Rain Garden Alliance to combat perennial storm water overflow problems that overtax city sewers and treatment systems. It’s a problem that frequently sends bacteria-laden sewage into roadways, homes, and waterways. Boaters and outdoor enthusiasts are regularly warned to avoid the contamination.

The Three Rivers Garden Alliance will expand solution-focused educational outreach through a web site and print materials. And it will aid the creation of water-absorbing rain gardens in Pittsburgh backyards.

Properly-installed rain gardens using native plants can absorb thousands of gallons of storm runoff. That prevents the runoff from overwhelming municipal systems which, in turn, release untreated waste into area waterways.

The approach has been used in Pittsburgh for years. But the new grant and matching funds it is helping to generate will make possible the creation of more than 170 rain gardens that could retain as much as 85,000 gallons per rainfall.

The effort puts native plants in the service of protecting healthy waterways, natural habitats and recreational resources. It’s a win-win idea for the people and nature of Pittsburgh. More information is available online.

Kittatinny Ridge Important Bird Area Habitat

Providing inspiring evidence of the possibilities of restoration, a handful of conservation groups and their volunteers in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley helped turn an industrial wasteland into the Lehigh Gap Wildlife Refuge.

Now, with the help of a TogetherGreen Innovation Grant, the Lehigh Valley Audubon Society– in partnership with the Lehigh Gap Nature Center and Audubon Pennsylvania – will mobilize more than 50 volunteers to experimentally re-introduce native grasses and wildflowers to the area.

Just six years ago, the mountainsides of this globally significant fall migration flyway were rendered barren from decades of zinc smelting. Grasslands, songbirds, raptors, and native wildflowers are now an increasingly common sight at the 750-acre Lehigh Gap Wildlife Refuge in the heart of the Kittatinny Ridge. An Innovation Grant will allow the Refuge to continue its path to restoration, as it becomes a vibrant grassland community.

In addition to planting native grasses and wildflowers, project volunteers will build deer fencing enclosures to understand the role of deer browsing on the enhancement efforts. They hope to increase foraging options for threatened birds like the Eastern Meadowlark and Prairie Warbler while providing hunting ground for raptors during fall migration. These volunteer actions will directly improve an additional one hundred acres of grassland habitat in the Refuge.

To learn from the results of the restoration work, Lehigh Valley Audubon will join with the nature center’s university and college partners to study the impact of the plantings. The data collection will detail which formula of plantings are successful and which, therefore, should be replicated in other portions of the Refuge, on adjacent lands and on other sites scheduled for restoration.

The effects of this project could influence the restoration of degraded lands into wildlife and bird refuges nationwide -- a change that would be welcomed by many who pass a polluted landscape and wonder, “What if…?” More information is available online.

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