If you live in parts of southern, central, or northeastern Pennsylvania, you may have already seen Brood X cicadas emerging. After developing underground for seventeen years, Pennsylvania’s largest group of periodical cicadas is ready to spend a few short weeks shedding their exoskeletons, mat...

PEC's legacy mine land reforestation initiative exploded in 2021, more than doubling the total number of acres planted since the program first launched. Follow a few of this year's 122 thousand seedlings on their journey from DCNR's forest nursery to planting sites all over Pennsylvania. ...

After a year of virtual events, PEC is excited to host or support a lineup of outdoor recreation activities this summer and fall. We have running, walking, cycling, and paddling events – so whatever your preferred form of recreation, there’s probably an event for you. Scroll through the story...

Trails can be a tremendous economic opportunity for small towns – but all the funding and political muscle in the world won’t matter if your trail project doesn’t address real community needs and center community voices. In her new book, trails advocate and community-builder Amy Camp explains ...

Building trails isn’t as simple as some people think! That’s especially true when the design goal is to welcome users of limited abilities including children, seniors, and those who are otherly-abled. Building a multi-purpose, ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) accessible trail that is sa...

Whenever a new trail project is considered, questions immediately arise about who will own the trail, who will maintain it, and who will be liable for it. When that trail passes through multiple municipalities, which is very common in the state of Pennsylvania, finding the answers to these basic...

In the perennial swing state of Pennsylvania, elections are often decided by voters who don’t identify with either political party – and recent polling shows Independents have swung hard on the issue of climate. With 3 out of 4 Pennsylvanians now voicing serious concern about the impacts of clim...

There are two ways to participate in the 2021 Public Lands Ride. We are excited to promote both an in-person event returning to Black Moshannon State Park on October 2, 2021, and the release of six new routes in different state forests to be ridden anytime. Learn more here.  Overview This rou...

Pennsylvania is moving forward on investments in Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) as part of its plan to comprehensively address climate change.  CCUS removes CO2 emissions at the source, before they have the chance to enter the atmosphere and cause warming effects. Once captured, C...

Nobody knows exactly how many orphaned oil and gas wells dot the Pennsylvania landscape – even conservative estimates put the number well into the hundreds of thousands. Every day these defunct facilities remain unplugged, they’re emitting greenhouse gases, contaminating groundwater, and comprom...

2020 was the hottest year ever recorded. 2019 was the third-hottest, after 2016. In fact, each of the top-ten hottest years in human history was recorded in this century – and we’re not even a quarter of the way through. Meanwhile, Pennsylvanians’ lives and livelihoods are increasingly being d...

It didn’t take long for the new state and federal legislative sessions to become active, so let’s get right to it. First and foremost is the Governor’s proposal to link with the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (aka “RGGI”) – a market-based, multistate platform to reduce carbon ...

In 1971, Pennsylvania became the first state to guarantee citizens' rights to clean air, pure water, and a healthy environment. Fifty years later, the state legislator who led the campaign for Pennsylvania's Environmental Rights Amendment is taking it to the next level. In his new book, Franklin Kur...

Mouse over the photo and scroll down to view the StoryMap   The Pennsylvania Sojourn Program, administered by PEC’s affiliate POWR in partnership with the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, is one of a number of programs supported by PEC that help connect peo...

Finally! After a year and a half, a robust public outreach campaign, multiple revisions and updates, and hundreds of hours spent analyzing and designing preferred alignments, the Tookany Creek Trail Feasibility Study has been completed and published. The Tookany Creek Trail, which will form a...

For most of its history in academia, ecological studies has been centered on STEM disciplines. But an emerging interdisciplinary movement is opening the environmental field to new scholarly approaches and bringing new voices into the discussion. PEC’s Lily Jones speaks with John MacNeill Miller, a...

The Pennsylvania Environmental Council’s Public Lands Ride seeks to celebrate and showcase the wealth of public parks and forests across the Commonwealth, bringing awareness to public lands as an invaluable resource for us to protect and enjoy.  In 2019, PEC hosted the inaugural Public Lan...

PEC’s mission to achieve conservation through innovation, collaboration, education and advocacy is exemplified through our work with the statewide Water Trails Program. PEC has managed the Pennsylvania Water Trail Program since 2008 in partnership with PA DCNR, PA Fish and Boat Commission, and...

In 2019, PEC worked with Bonneville Environmental Foundation to help us measure our carbon and water footprints. We purchased carbon offsets, renewable energy certificates, and water restoration credits to help counterbalance these footprints. That same year, we served as the sustainability part...

As Pennsylvania weighs a new DEP rule that would expand leak detection and repair requirements for oil and gas producers, there's new research on the integrity of relatively low-producing "stripper" wells. Such facilities would remain exempt under Pennsylvania's current rulemaking, but a University ...

The idea for the 9/11 National Memorial Trail was presented just days after the events of September 11, 2001, as a way to pay tribute to those who lost their lives in the attacks. In the years since, that idea has come to life as a 1,300-mile system of trails connecting the sites of the three pl...

For over a century the residents of Hazelwood have been cut off from the Monongahela River, even though the historic Pittsburgh neighborhood sits right on its banks. Now there's a community-driven plan to reconnect the community with the water, while recognizing and preserving remnants of the indust...

This post was originally published March 19 in the Southwest CDC Globe Times, as part of PEC's ongoing watershed education and community outreach on behalf of the Philadelphia Water Department. Have you seen the colorful “Keep it Clean” markers outside of Philadelphia's storm drains? Ea...

Eight members of PEC’s staff from across the state attended the 7th Annual Virtual Winter Gathering of the Delaware River Watershed Initiative a.k.a. DRWI, during the last week of February. The DRWI is a cross-cutting collaboration working to conserve and restore the streams that supply drinki...

Pennsylvania Environmental Council · Trails On Film Filmmakers Jesse Sampley and Matt Deneen chat with POWR's Tali MacArthur about the upcoming Wild & Scenic Film Festival On Tour stop in Pennsylvania There’s a reason why PEC’s motto is “conservation through cooperation": in the end...

When asked by the City of Philadelphia what they were looking for in the Spring Garden Street Greenway, the response from the city’s public was clear: they wanted a corridor that was safe, accessible, and attractive. These desires were little changed from PEC’s feasibility assessment conducted n...

One year ago, COVID-19 was only just beginning to make its presence felt in the U.S. By the end of March, Pennsylvania and much of the rest of the country were in lockdown, and already, it was clear that our relationship to trails and open space was changing. News coverage and anecdotal reports indi...

Want to do something to protect and improve the environment around your home, community, and waterways? Interested in observing natural spaces and providing valuable information to scientists monitoring water quality, protecting wildlife, or studying climate change? You can do all of that and...

You may remember learning in our video, How to Regrow a Forest, how PEC restores native forests on formerly mined lands by implementing the Forest Reclamation Approach with partners in the Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative (ARRI). You may also remember from this video that there are cl...

In celebration of our 50th anniversary, PEC commissioned OPR Group to create a commemorative book exploring the past, present, and future of our organization and of the places we have worked to protect and restore. While the print edition of this volume is no longer available, we invite everyone...

Pittsburgh's rivers made the city an industrial titan at a time when environmental damage was accepted as the price of progress. Now they're being put back to work generating low cost, carbon-free electricity -- without creating new environmental or land use impacts. Allegheny County Executive Ri...

Since 1983, Pennsylvanians have had the opportunity to rally around their favorite state waterway and vote for the River of the Year. This year’s winner is the Shenango River, which runs for 82 miles in Western Pennsylvania, eventually joining with the Mahoning to form the Beaver River northwest o...

Join the Rail Trail Council of NEPA and the Northeast Chapter of Get Your Tail on the Trail and celebrate with a Tail on the Trail Kickoff Winter Challenge — 30 miles in 30 days. The event will begin with a celebration on Saturday, February 6th, from noon to 3 PM at the Union Dale Trailhead of...

This is a great time to have access to trails and a challenging time to manage them. For the past year the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, in an effort to better understand how the increased number of people getting out on trails during the Pandemic was impacting those recreational resource...