Lightning Updates
Conservation Resolutions for the New Year
As we start a new year -- following one that was so many things, but above all eye opening -- it seems like a good time to think about how we make 2021 an improvement. Yes, new year resolutions can get tiresome, but they’re really just setting out some goals. Things...
One Simple Act
Senator Paul Sarbanes, second from left, launching the first Chesapeake Gateways in 2000.By Jonathan DohertyPaul S. Sarbanes, United States Senator from Maryland from 1977 to 2007, died on December 6. Much is already being written about this effective, kind, and...
A Remembrance
John Maounis, with his beloved wife Margaret Bursaw, early this year at Tomales Bay in California.By Jonathan DohertyJohn Maounis, former superintendent of the National Park Service Chesapeake Office, and original co-convener of the Chesapeake Conservation...
Addressing Urban Park Equity & More
About seven years ago community residents began organizing to turn a decaying, abandoned park space into a new model community park in Baltimore. Find out more in this video.(Photo: Bernard C. Jack Young/Twitter) Over the past six months, Lightning Updates have...
Public Health, Equity, Conservation & the Partnership’s 2020 Annual Meeting
"We Need to Talk: Conserving Land for Public Health, Equity, and Access to Nature” kicked off the Partnership's 2020 Annual Meeting with a candid conversation among a distinguished group of professionals.We need to engage a new, intentionally inclusive generation of...
Major New Project to Document African American Sites & Landscapes in Watershed
Black American watermen dominated the oyster fleets in Virginia during the late 1800s. This photo was taken along the York River around 1900. (Photo: The Mariner's Museum)Almost a year ago, we reported on the Chesapeake Conservation Partnership's 2019 Annual Meeting...
Weigh in on a New Public Health Goal
Access to the water, parks, green space, healthy foods, and more are all related to land conservation. And all among the many components of public health. (Photos (clockwise from top left): MDDNR; Google Maps; Doherty) The connections between land conservation and...
Want to Buy a Flooding Risk?
Realtor.com is now displaying two different indicators for flooding risk for all properties.Last week Realtor.com began displaying flood hazard information for each of the 110 million homes currently listed on its site. It is the only major on-line real estate listing...
Redline Heat
Groundwork RVA, a community-based non-profit in Richmond, Virginia, is working to build climate safe neighborhoods in communities where the ramifications of historic redlining are still ubiquitous. (Image: Groundwork RVA) It’s summer. It’s hot. But it’s more than just...
Farms Under Threat
A 2020 report by the American Farmland Trust assesses farmland preservation policies by state and sets out a call to action to strengthen them. (All graphics: Farms Under Threat/AFT) Recently Lightning Update explored implications of the pandemic on farming in part 1...
