By Brenda Barrett, Director, DCNR's Bureau of Recreation & Conservation

At recent workshops, focus groups and surveys of public recreational preferences, trails emerge as the number one amenity for Pennsylvania. Trails are valued for the connection they offer between home, school and work, the opportunity for healthy exercise, and the chance for family togetherness.

For those on the outside looking in at the shale-gas drilling boom blossoming in Pennsylvania, profiting off it can seem daunting: Only selected landowners have been blessed with the gas, the investment prices aren't reliably positive, and the vast majority of the technology and know-how originate in Texas, meaning many of the jobs go to out-of-town workers.

By Wayne W. Kober, PA Association of Environmental Professionals

On October 10 and 11, 2008, the first ever Environmental Heritage Summit was held at the Keystone State Office Building in Harrisburg.

The following is one of several resources the Penn State Extension Service has available for landowners interested in learning more about natural gas drilling on their property.

The grounds of all Pittsburgh Public Schools soon will be greener and more inviting with help from the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy’s new School Grounds Greening Initiative.

By Cyndi Camp, Doc Fritchey Chapter Trout Unlimited

This year the Doc Fritchey Chapter of Trout Unlimited co-funded a new Trout In The Classroom program at Ben Franklin School in Harrisburg, fully funded a program at Upper Dauphin Area high School and provided financial help to continue the program in St. Margaret Mary School and Cathedral, both in Harrisburg.

While news about the housing market can be found in just about every newspaper, or seen or heard on the radio and television news, you don't hear much about the concerns in the wildlife housing market.

The Herron Avenue Corridor Coalition in Pittsburgh's Hill District recently held an unveiling ceremony at the John Wesley A.M.E. Zion church to demonstrate the geothermal heating and cooling system using abandoned mine water from an early 1800s mine to heat and cool the church.

By Andy McAllister, Watershed Coordinator

With the future of the Growing Greener program in doubt beyond 2010, the future of the Watershed Specialists positions may too be in jeopardy. Tales From The Creeks is a multi-part series dedicated to the Watershed Specialists and their work.

By Ben Plunkett, Western Pennsylvania Conservancy

A little over a year ago, I was able to enjoy the Pennsylvania outdoors in a way that I had never experienced it before. I consider myself an avid outdoorsman, and have spent countless hours exploring all that Pennsylvania’s land, water, and wildlife has to offer.

For the second time in 13 years, Game Commission and Philadelphia Zoo officials teamed up to foster a zoo-hatched eagle into a wild nest in the Commonwealth. This time the eaglet was placed in a wild nest already holding two eaglets near Doylestown, Bucks County.

Just 20 years after the last eaglets were brought into Pennsylvania from Canada, bald eagles have recorded remarkable nesting successes here, according to Game Commission officials.

By Kyra Norton, EPCAMR Environmental Education Intern

The Avondale Hill community was the site of the deadliest mine disaster in Anthracite coal mining history. On September 6, 1869, 110 men and boys perished in the mine where they were trapped by a suspect fire which began in the mine shaft.

Two summer interns with Stream Restoration, Inc. and BioMost, Inc. relate their experiences in watershed restoration in the August issue of The Catalyst published by the Slippery Rock Watershed Coalition reprinted in thePA Environment Digest.

In 2003 the staff of the Eastern PA Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation created the “AMD Avengers vs.The Pollution Posse” Activity Book to help teach kids history of anthracite mining and the environmental problems associated with it. But, they wanted to do more.

In northern Pennsylvania, at the far edges of the Chesapeake watershed, a race to extract natural gas from one of the largest deposits in the country is causing heartburn among water-quality advocates, according to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

This year the world's first refuge for birds of prey,Hawk Mountain Sanctuary near Kempton, Berks County, will celebrate its 75th anniversary.

By Sandy Long, The River Reporter

“It’s changed the region where I live in Colorado entirely within a decade,” said Frank Smethurst, on the topic of natural gas extraction. Host of Trout Unlimited’s (TU) “On the Rise,” a nationally broadcast television show that airs on the Sportsman Channel, Smethurst spent three days along the Upper Delaware River last week, casting in the clear waters and filming for a future segment to be broadcast next April.

By Carol Denny, Chesapeake Bay Foundation

The just published Fall 2009 issue of Save the Bay magazine by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation includes a special article on the potential impact of Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania, a must read for everyone concerned about this issue.

After leading close to 10,000 students on CBF outdoor experiences as a teacher, Bill Bechtel joined the Chesapeake Bay Foundation as a professional educator and canoe instructor.

By Dr. Pete Ryan, President, God's Country Chapter Trout Unlimited

When I first learned about the Marcellus Shale almost two years ago, it was a real eye-opener. This deep geologic formation extends over 95,000 square miles through parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation Bay Daily Blog posted this story about recent contamination in Dunkard Creek killing just about every living thing for 32 miles in Southwestern PA. Click here for an audio version of this story.

Even before abundant autumn rains sent the drawn-down Memorial Lake inching back to its original full-pool level, very good things already were beginning to happen at the impoundment that is the focal point of the state park bearing its name.

This month the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency highlighted Pennsylvania's efforts to clean up abandoned mine drainage in Sterling Run, Centre County as a nonpoint source success story.

Over 160 people gathered in the impressive marble rotunda of Founders Hall at the Milton Hershey School on April 1 for The Sustainable Landscapes Conference.

Smokey Bear has been telling Americans since 1944, "Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires," but a new bill (House Bill 262 (Haluska-D-Cambria)) under consideration in the General Assembly may begin to change Pennsylvania's approach to the blazes, according to forest experts in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.

The Eastern PA Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation has taken large efforts towards cleaning up local streams affected by abandoned mine drainage throughout the Anthracite Region.

This spring's shad runs brought remarkably mixed results-and some new concerns-in the Bay's tributaries, with some showing increases in migrating shad, while others stayed the same or declined.

By Cliff Denholm, Stream Restoration Inc.

As many of you may already be aware, a partnership effort has been organized to conduct two water quality snapshots of all the publicly-funded passive treatment systems located within Pennsylvania.

The Quecreek Mine Rescue Foundation last Saturday held the seventh anniversary celebration of the rescue of nine miners from the Quecreek Mine in Somerset County.

By Karl Blankenship, Chesapeake Bay Journal

The largest nutrient and sediment control device in the Chesapeake Bay watershed is likely to stop functioning in the next 15 to 20 years under current conditions, which could dramatically increase the amount of pollution to the Upper Bay.

By Matthew Royer, Chesapeake Bay Foundation

Pennsylvanians value the Commonwealth’s abundant natural beauty and resources, its forests and rivers and streams. We have a constitutional right to clean air and clean water. This is Penn’s Woods, with a model state public lands system, developed and fought for by conservation giants like Gifford Pinchot and Dr. Maurice Goddard.

Scientists from the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, working with a Mercyhurst College professor, has discovered a plant in Girard, Erie County that has never been recorded in Pennsylvania.

On November 15, Americans will celebrate America Recycles Day. On that day and every day, recycling is a simple way in which everyone in your community can protect the environment, preserve our natural resources, and contribute to the economic well-being of our nation.

Looking out at a firehouse floor crowded with listeners, Elaine Evans ticked off the reasons why she’s proud to call the Pocono Mountains area her home: sprawling state park and forestlands; abundant wildlife; fertile wetlands; clean, cold waterways. All surrounding a community where lifestyles are linked closely to the land.

By Mark Nale

It was an unsettling sight for Trout Unlimited members to see a trackhoe sitting in the famous trout stream and a huge offroad dump truck using Centre County’s Spring Creek as a highway. Those were the images motorists witnessed as they traveled between Bellefonte and Milesburg last August.