By now you are likely aware of the critical role that riparian, or streamside, buffers play in improving and maintaining high quality waters in our rivers and streams.  Yet, this is only part of the story.

Meadows and forests adjacent to waterways also serve as important habitat and migration corridors for many of Pennsylvania’s native land (and air) based animals! Knowing and understanding these additional benefits can help you engage and inspire more people in your community by tapping into the issues and creatures they may care most about.

Contact Tmacarthur@pecpa.org for a recording of this webinar where staff of the PA Game Commission and volunteers of Bird Town Pennsylvania shared their expert knowledge about mammal and bird species that use these habitats to feed, breed and raise young, take cover from predators, and migrate seasonally from their summer to winter homes.

If you missed this presentation on volunteer management best practices including volunteer engagement methods, best online tools for tracking time and activities, volunteer coordinator job descriptions, and why tracking volunteer participation matters for donors and stakeholders, contact tmacarthur@pecpa.org to request the recording. 

Missed the presentation about managing the fast-growing, pervasive, and invasive Japanese Knotweed using goats?

Contact tmacarthur@pecpa.org to request a link to the recording. 

POWR hosted staff of Resource Media to answer your questions about Instagram and help you get started using it.

To request a link to the recoding, contact tmacarthur@pecpa.org

POWR hosted Brenda Costa, Executive Director of the French Creek Valley Conservancy for a Lunch and Learn webinar.

Brenda shared outreach and marketing tips, ideas, and tools that can be used and applied by any organization to more effectively engage new and existing members, volunteers, and donors. 

Not only do organizations benefit from increased public support, but our waterways and watersheds do, too.

What can effective, targeted, creative marketing and outreach do for you? Listen to the recording and find out!

 Please email tmacarthur@pecpa.org

POWR hosted a two part webinar on Green Parking Lots and how to encourage your local municipality to support and implement them.  Topics covered included: Green parking lot design, benefits, species selection, municipal ordinances, and case studies.

The recording for Part 1 is HERE

Part 2 is HERE

POWR hosted this Conversation Café about efforts and challenges related to sharing water quality data in a meaningful and useful way with local government officials. Contact Tmacarthur@pecpa.org for the recording if you missed it.

Hear the story of a watershed organization’s journey through the ups and downs of the non profit life cycle to a place of rediscovery and impact. Email tmacarthur@pecpa.org for a link to the recording.

Learn about the role and importance of Pennsylvania’s forest and wood products industry in implementing sustainable forest management practices to maintain healthy watersheds and ecosystems. Working forests are an important part of Pennsylvania’s diverse economy, and with nearly 17 million acres of public and private forestlands, efforts to manage for a continuous supply of wood while also ensuring clean air and water, high quality wildlife habitat, and increased carbon storage are critical.

Contact tmacarthur@pecpa.org for a link to the recording.

Creating Stronger Connections: A Communication Best Practices Workshop was an interactive session on the art of crafting purposeful communication objectives and building lasting stakeholder relationships. Explore best practices for media relations, event communication, and execution. You can watch the recording to learn how to tailor environmental messages to resonate with diverse audiences.  You’ll still get a set of informational toolkits, courtesy of Green Fin Studio, empowering you to host impactful and engaging events!

As always, contact Tali MacArthur for a link to the recording.

The CREATE Resilience Research and Community Learning Hub was created to help foster communities that are ready, responsive, resilient, and empowered in the face of changing conditions and environmental hazards.

During this webinar you will learn what makes a community better able to identify vulnerabilities and prepare for, adapt to, and recover from climate related impacts and other hazards. You will also gain access to digital resources for resiliency planning that you can use and share with other leaders in your community, including key local government decision-makers. Click HERE for the recording

Pennsylvania’s Fertilizer Law was updated in July of 2022 in part to help protect local streams and rivers. But many homeowners still don’t know about it and how it applies to them. In this webinar, Denise Uzupis, Natural Resource Program Specialist with the PA Department of Agriculture, explains the law, to whom it applies, and how you can help spread the word about better lawn management for improved water quality! Click HERE for the recording

This Conversation Cafe was co-hosted by POWR and the volunteer leaders of the Little Lehigh Watershed Stewards. It included an interactive discussion about the impacts of winter salting on local waterways and experiences watershed groups in PA have had monitoring, communicating their results, and advocating for change locally and regionally. The recording can be found HERE. 

POWR hosted staff of the PADEP to present proposed changes to the Water Quality Monitoring Methods. Even after the official comment period ends, this is still a great review of PADEP’s methods and approaches to determining the status of waterways as meeting standards or being impaired. Recording available HERE

POWR hosted a conversation with a remarkable young lady who  offered a fresh perspective on the crucial intersection of water resources and community engagement.  Listen to this Conversation Cafe about building new partnerships and capacity for watershed groups. Recording HERE

In this recorded webinar author and illustrator Rosalie Haizlett give a wonderful presentation that celebrates the release of her second book, Tiny Worlds of the Appalachian Mountains: An Artist’s Journey (Mountaineers Books, 2024). Tiny Worlds chronicles Rosalie’s 6-month journey from Alabama to Newfoundland in 2022 as she hiked and looked for small, often-overlooked flora, fauna, and fungi. She painted and wrote about her observations along the way, and the finished book includes more than 150 watercolor paintings and illustrated maps.