Imagine a city teeming with pockets of bird habitat, green space, and a variety of plant animal life. Believe it or not, urban areas can become wildlife havens and, even more, provide opportunities for people to connect to and help protect these important habitats. When supported and encouraged by municipalities, urban and surburban restoration programs can gain visibility and traction. Audubon...
Grantee: Pittsburgh Botanic Garden
Partner Organization: Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Grant Amount: $45000
Year: 2011
Appalachian Woodlands and Cove Forest Habitat Reconstruction
Reconstructing an Appalachian Woodland for Pittsburghers
About 20 minutes west of Pittsburgh, people are hard at work transforming a former mine site – typically areas that are toxic, degraded, and off-limits to the general public – into a botanic garden featuring native habitats. They’re using green practices and processes from start to finish: recycling all of the metal waste found on the site, using solar power for irrigation, treating the acid mine drainage, and restoring native ecosystems to their former grandeur. In the coming years, Pittsburghers will be able to enjoy a beautiful botanic garden – the only one ever to be created on an abandoned mine site!
With TogetherGreen funding, the Pittsburgh Botanic Garden transformed 15 acres of the site into a native woodland habitat garden. Through a partnership with Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania and the fifty-year-old social services organization Auberle, up to 100 neglected kids had the chance to be part of the transformation, visiting the site on field trips, learning about native woodlands, and helping with the reclamation and restoration.
This is exactly what TogetherGreen aspires to do: transform lives and land at the same time.
Featured Current Grant
Featured Past Grant
Raritan River Watershed, New Jersey
New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the nation. However, its metropolitan areas are rich with many patches of wetlands. These urban wildlife habitats support a surprising array of plant and animal biodiversity, which are threatened by development, pollution, human encroachment and invasive species.
In 2009, New Jersey Audubon received a TogetherGreen planning grant to develop...
Grant Amount:
$4,783
Year:
2009