The Importance of Cumberland County, PA to the Chesapeake Bay with Emily Thorpe

Welcome to the Wandering Pen monthly Podcast where you will find interviews on a variety of topics - from travel, wildlife conservation, the environment, writing & publishing, fine arts, and history just to name a few. I am Christine Musser, your host.

Welcome to -

Episode 2 - The Environment and the Chesapeake Bay.

HOST: Today’s podcast occurred on July 3, 2019.  I had the opportunity to interview Emily Thorpe from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Pennsylvania office.  Emily is the Pennsylvania Student Leadership Coordinator and Supervisor of the Student Action and restoration program at the Foundation.

Let’s start with why Cumberland County is important to the Chesapeake Bay. I guess is that it has to do with the Conodoguinet and the Yellow Breeches Creeks?

 

EMILY: The Cumberland Valley is primarily drained by the Conodoguinet Creek and the Yellow Breeches Creek, those are both tributaries of the Susquehanna. The Susquehanna puts up to 50 percent of all of the freshwater draining into the Chesapeake Bay each day. And it’s the largest single tributary to the Chesapeake Bay, so, um, all of our tributaries to the Susquehanna are important, but our two here in Cumberland County are especially important. The Yellow Breeches is known for being a world-class trout stream. A lot of people frequently are fishing on the breeches. Then the Conodoguinet is also a recreational hub for kayakers and canoeists, um, and it does have some impairments, ah, mostly sediment, um, and nutrients, high nutrient levels. Some of that is due to agricultural lands, but it’s also due to development along the shores.

Photos of the Yellow Breeches & Conodoguinet Creeks and the Susquehanna River

HOST: Ok. Now when you said about the sediment -  can you just talk a little bit about the drainage from those?

EMILY: Sure. So, whenever it rains water hits the land and if we had an intact forest ecosystem those trees the leaves and branches and all of that would capture a lot of that water before it would ever reach the ground and then once it was to hit in the forest it would generally be absorbed by the trees and the other plants growing there. Because we’ve altered the land use in our area we maybe don’t have those natural filters to absorb as much as the water when we do have rain events, so, what happens is the rain hits the ground, and it carries with it nutrients coming from say your lawn fertilizer, or, um, manure, or even fumes from car exhaust it carries those nutrients and sediment, being soil, into our waterways and that can cause issues for the animals as well as the plants that live in our waterways.

HOST: What is – how are the waterways in the Cumberland Valley/Cumberland County area, um, compare to, um, other creeks throughout Pennsylvania? Can you, is that an easy question to answer or?

EMILY: It’s not really an easy question to answer (chuckles) –

HOST: I didn’t think it would be but . . .

EMILY: Some parts of our streams may be higher quality, and then as you move down the stream, you may see land-use changes tend to have of an effect. So, the confluence of the Conodoguinet and the Susquehanna River was actually designated as impaired even for recreation, um, just a few years ago, um, and I don’t know if that still stands, but that’s something, ah, that DEP - Department of Environmental Protection – they’re responsible for assessing our waterways and determining what impairment status they have – so, they can be impaired for aquatic life, they can be impaired for drinking water, and then they can be impaired for recreation. So, DEP list, ah, list those impairments and they actually divide it up into different sections of the waterway, so, it can be challenging, um, to determine what the overall stream health is for any given waterway that’s something I would want to defer to the staff scientist on.

HOST: Ok. Let’s go ahead and get with, since you work directly with students and the education, just what exactly is that you do with students to help them, I guess to educate them, what ages do you work with, can you just give us some detail of that, please?

EMILY: Sure, so, um, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation actually operates over fifteen environmental education programs throughout the watershed – Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia is where all of our programs are. Here in Pennsylvania, we have three education programs. One is our Susquehanna Watershed Environmental Program. It’s a canoe based program that gets students out, usually on their local waterways, um, canoeing and learning about their watershed, looking at the water chemistry and the macroinvertebrates or the aquatic insects that are living in the stream, ah - and then the other program that we have is the Student Action and Restoration Program, and it’s actually new this year. The canoe program has been around for twenty-nine years, but this program is brand new, and we’re working with land conservancies and other non-governmental organizations as well as governmental organizations like DCNR [Department of Conservation and Natural Resources] and state parks to provide environmental education programming at their sites, so, we’re actually bringing our educators to field sites that are managed by partners, and we’re working with students to learn a little bit about land use and how that affects water quality and then we’re actually charging them to taking action; we’re teaching them how they can take action either in their school or their home community to restore some of our waterways; so we give them the skills and training that they need to be able to plant trees or to remove invasive species or plant conservation landscaping such as native plants. So, they are some examples of the types of action projects we are doing on the Student Action and Restoration Program. All of our programs are open to grades 6 through 12, and so, we’re primarily working with middle and high school students.

The third that we have in Pennsylvania is a little bit different – it’s called our Student Leadership Program. That’s the program that I’m primarily responsible for, and so, I’m working with high school students out of schools; our other two programs, um, work directly with school groups, you could think of it kind of like a field trip or a field, we say field experience. Our Student Leadership Program is working with students outside of the school settings, so these are students that have decided that they want to take their interest in environmental issues here in Pennsylvania to the next level.

You might be familiar with that program thanks to its work designating the eastern Hellbender as the Pennsylvania State Amphibian that was a project that came directly out of our Student Leadership Program and was led by our high school student leaders, um, but these students are also taking action in their own communities in many other ways. They’re actually leading and hosting plantings for other students and community member; they’re restoring rain gardens; they’re leading environmental awareness days at their own middle and high schools, so, they’re really deciding what it is they want to do, what kind of contribution they want to make. Our program provides them with the support and resources and training to be able to make that happen. Then, so, that program runs throughout the entire school year, but we’re getting ready to kind of kick off our new year with our student leadership summer courses which are five-day intensive program. We’re traveling, overnight, visiting the most beautiful places that our watershed has to offer to get inspired and to meet with partners to learn about how we can help to support their efforts as well.

HOST: I know that when I talked to you earlier, you were planning on actually and preparing to go away – to head out on Monday [July 8], I believe –

EMILY: On Sunday, yep –

HOST: And where exactly are you going?

EMILY: Yeah, so this course is traveling primarily throughout the Pennsylvania Wilds Region. So, we’re introducing students, I say, to all the amazing natural resources that our state has to offer. It’s like the grand tour of Pennsylvania. So, I wish we could hit everything, but, um, we will be canoeing on the West Branch of the Susquehanna; We’ll be learning about Hellbenders with a professor from Lycoming College; up at Sinnemahoning State Park we will be working with Trout Unlimited to assess a small stream in the PA Wilds Region for aquatic life; we’ll be learning to fly fish, a quaint official Pennsylvania hobby, we’ll be visiting the Elk County Region, hopefully, see some Elk and go to the visitors center – there we’ll learn about that restoration and conservation success story; then we will end our week at Penn State Arboretum and then Alan Seeger Natural State Forest where there stands an old-growth Hemlocks.

So, it’s kind of a whirlwind six days, um, but students usually leave feeling really inspired, really motivated to take action, and really appreciative of the beauty of their home state and all that it has to offer.

HOST: Ok, for any, um, parent of students who have interest in, you know, the environment and the Chesapeake Bay and the waterways here in Pennsylvania, how do they get involved in this? Can you just give a little bit of detail as to, you know, if a student would want to take on of these trips or adventures?

EMILY: Sure, so, if there are any teachers or school groups that are interested in our field program, I would say that you could visit our website, which is cbf.org/apply, and that’s where you can find all the information about our field education programs. For students that are interested in Student Leadership, you can find on our website cbf.org/studentleadership information about our programs as well as ways to connect with us, and one of those ways would be to email slcoordinator@cbf.org. That’s one way to get connected with us there or on the website. The applications for our summer programs it’s actually fairly competitive process, and they go live as early as March. So, we’ve had students that have applied in March and are ready to go for their programs coming up next week and again at the end of July and again in mid-August.  So, we have three courses this year for students. I say courses because they really are intensive and we’re providing students with skills and training and coaching to develop their own action plans, and our expectation is that they do everything that they can to implement them throughout the school year so, we’re going above and beyond this five-day experience. All the information about our program is on the website. What we do, if say a student is interested in getting involved now and they’ve missed the deadline for summer courses that’s fine it’s a year-long program, so we do host Student Leadership Council meetings once a month in Harrisburg, but it’s also available remotely for students that live outside the area.  We also offer Student Leadership Confluences both in the Fall and in the Spring, and those are three-day skill and professional development experiences for students.

HOST: Does any this help them when they apply for college or does it help them to get into a particular school, they would like to major in with the environment does this help in any way?

EMILY: Yeah, absolutely. We offer all of our student leaders college recommendations if they would like them or if they would need them. We have also written job recommendations for some of our students. We have student leaders at Penn State University studying natural resources; we have a student leader getting ready to head to Mansfield University for Geoscience; Salisbury University in Maryland for Environmental Science or Environmental Studies. So, yeah, many of our students are pursuing those college degrees and eventually those career paths even, but not all of them. Some students decide to go to school for something completely different, but they’re totally aware now they’re more environmentally literate citizen of the watershed and that they can make informed decisions, but yes, I would say our program absolutely helps students with applying to college,  with getting into university and we do maintain connections with some universities. I mentioned that we are working with a professor from Lycoming, so we do try to facilitate those kinds of introductions through our program as well.

HOST: I think that is all the questions I have right now. Is there anything that I didn’t ask that you would like to include?

EMILY: Education is just one portion of our work at the Bay Foundation. I would also give a shout out to our environmental protection and restoration team. They are doing a ton of work, especially in supporting our new Keystone 10 million Trees partnership. And that’s an effort to plant 10 million trees with the help of many, many partners to plant 10 million trees across the state of Pennsylvania by 2025, and that is directly in response to the Chesapeake Bay clean up goals set forth by the Environmental Protection Agency. So, we’re working with partners around the state on education, and our Environmental Restoration team is working with partners around the state on planting trees and making sure that we have those in place to protect our water resources. If folks are interested in learning more about that, you can find that on our website as well or tenmilliontrees.org.

HOST: As I said earlier, there is a Chesapeake Bay Foundation right here in Harrisburg, so it’s not like they have to connect Maryland. Do you or anybody locally go into schools to talk with science classes?

EMILY: We don’t do a lot of in-school visits, and that’s because our primary motto in the education department “learn outside.” So, we believe in learning about natural resources actually outside where they exist. With that being said, we do offer mentors in the agricultural conservation program, which is designed specifically for students in agricultural science or FFA. So, we will do in-class visits to meet with those students, and then that program actually pairs them with our field restoration staff. So, folks that are working with farmers to plant trees and so we go out for a day in the field jobs shadowing experience following our in-class visit to the school. For the most part, we are not in schools, but we do meet with teachers, school administrations regularly so if you’re an administrator and you’re interested in learning more about our programs, please reach out, and we would be happy to come and meet with you and discuss that, as well.

HOST: Great, great – ok, anything else?

EMILY: Not that I can think of.

HOST: Ok. I want to thank you for chatting, and I’m looking forward to hopefully talking to you again and after this adventure and seeing what all the students got to see and do and everything and how it all went.

EMILY: Yeah, absolutely.

HOST: If you have any questions for Emily or you want to find out more about her program, you can reach her at ethorpe@cbf.org.

Well, that is it for this week’s podcast. Thanks for listening, and be sure to tune in next week. And, if you want to learn more about The Wandering Pen check out www.thewanderingpen.net there, you will also be able to purchase my book, Silver Spring Township, which is part of Arcadia’s Images of America series.

Till next time – take care and– try to at least learn something new every day.

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Learn more about the Hellbender

Photo Credit: Mike Pinder
Photo captured from Chesapeake Bay Foundation YouTube Channel

Disclaimer: The views expressed by guests are their own and do not reflect the views of the host or The Wandering Pen unless explicitly stated during the interview.

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