Tag: news-import
Earth Day 1970 Changed American History
April 21, 2020[caption id="attachment_271372" align="alignnone" width="819"] At 1983's Earthfest, the center's celebration of Earth Day, participants played with a 6-foot Earthball, one of the many activities at the event. Mike Weilbacher, then a member of the education staff, organized the festival for the center.[/caption]
By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
Wednesday, April 22 marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, a watershed moment in American history, and a day that continues to change with the times. While this is not the Earth Day anyone expected, as one billion people from almost 200 countries are NOT, as originally expected, gathering in large protests and…
Come See the Flowers Race the Trees
April 15, 2020[caption id="attachment_271365" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Red trillium, nicknamed wake robin up in New England, is one of the rarest wildflowers at the Schuylkill Center, and grows along the Ravine Loop.Photo courtesy of Will Terry.[/caption]
By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
Like all forests around us, the Schuylkill Center is in full bloom right now. You really have to see it to believe it. In fact, you can, if you simply walk down our Ravine Loop.
Like the red trillium in the accompanying photograph, an elusive and rare plant that New Englanders dubbed “wake robin,” as it bloomed there about when robins return…
Finch conjunctivitis requires isolation, too
April 8, 2020[caption id="attachment_271348" align="alignnone" width="576"] A recent patient, an American Goldfinch, with conjunctivitis.[/caption]
Wildlife rehabilitators are well aware of the potential for disease transmission between humans and wildlife as well as between individual animals- it is a calculated risk we take in the course of our daily work.
For example, we routinely practice isolation and quarantine in the wildlife clinic when we admit an animal with a contagious disease such as finch conjunctivitis, as was the case with this female American goldfinch. She arrived in early March with both her eyes so swollen and crusted she could hardly see. She needed…
Cooper’s Hawk Rehabilitation
April 1, 2020
This beautiful juvenile Cooper’s hawk was brought to the Wildlife Clinic in late February after being found on the side of a busy highway. Thanks to the quick actions of a kind rescuer, he was able to receive prompt attention, including treatment for head trauma and surgery to repair a wound on his chest. When he arrived, he was not even able to stand, as shown in the first picture. But after nearly 4 weeks of healing, and some recovery time in our flight cage, he was successfully released on March 17th.
It is because of the quick thinking and…
Saying goodbye to our patients
March 27, 2020[caption id="attachment_271325" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Flying squirrel 19-1849 receiving a feeding[/caption]
It’s hard to say goodbye to patients who have been with us for a long time, and this flying squirrel was cared for at the Wildlife Clinic for 129 days!
Last November we received 2 baby flying squirrels, both with their eyes still closed. They had been found in an attic, and unfortunately the finder was not willing to attempt to reunite them with their mother. Both babies were thin, dehydrated, and hypothermic on arrival, and sadly one little squirrel didn’t make it. We were able to help this little…
The Schuylkill Center’s Forest is Open for Business!
March 16, 2020[caption id="attachment_271309" align="alignnone" width="3024"] Photo Credit: Jerome Eno[/caption]
By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
Like almost every institution in the region and every school in the state, the Schuylkill Center closed our Visitor Center last week in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our Nature Preschool closed for two weeks, and we canceled all programming through the end of the month.
Our Wildlife Clinic on Port Royal Avenue, however, remains open, taking your injured, orphaned and sick creatures. Our staff there, some of the hardest working people you’ll ever meet, are practicing social distancing and enhanced sanitizing to keep both you and them…
Natural Selections: Manayunk and Manatawna: Our Lenape Place Names
March 5, 2020By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
One of the pleasures of teaching and talking about our Roxborough land are our historic place names, so many of them Lenape in origin: Wissahickon, Conshohocken, Manatawna, Cinnaminson, Manayunk. Widen the lens a bit, and Philadelphia maps burst with Lenape words: Shackamaxon, Wingohocking, Kingsessing, Tulpehocken, Tioga.
Sadly, Phildelphians are taught too little, if anything, about the Lenape, the original people here, our First People, and too much that is taught is at best misleading and too often wrong. That statue of a Lenape chief that guards a bluff above the Wissahickon? He is carelessly outfitted…
A Climate Striker Laments, “We Had to Stop our Education to Teach you a Lesson”
March 2, 2020By Mike Weilbacher and Cyan Cuthbert '23
On September 20, 2019, millions of people-- most of them school-age children-- engaged in a climate strike, leaving work or school to protest the lack of adult action on climate change. Looking for a student’s perspective on the issue, I approached Roxborough’s acclaimed Saul High School to find a student who might have participated in the climate strike at City Hall.
Assistant principal Gabriel Tuffs steered me to Cyan Cuthbert, a 14-year-old freshman who lives in Germantown. She elected to leave school that day to join the millions of kids across the planet…
Wildlife In Winter – When Things get Rough
February 5, 2020By Rebecca Michelin, Director of Wildlife Rehabilitation
With “baby season” for most species beginning in early spring, juveniles should be mostly self-sufficient by the time the fall and winter rolls around, and be able to sustain themselves through the colder months or to make a long migration south. As they learn to navigate the world without parental support and guidance, the first fall and winter can be brutal on young animals. [pullquote]The winter months are the time of year when we see some of the most challenging cases at the Wildlife Clinic, and many times they are a result of young,…
Year of Action: Join us in Taking Action
January 31, 2020By Mike Weilbacher
The New Year 2020 promises to be pivotal on a number of fronts, but especially the environment. The increasing urgency of the climate crisis has sparked higher levels of activism by new, youth-led groups like the Sunrise Movement. Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg’s lonely 2018 climates strike in front of the Swedish parliament have blossomed into climate strikes of millions of kids skipping school across the world.
The presidential election near the year's end promises to be not only loud, but will have an out sized impact on environmental policy, with major implications for how America, and thus…
