Bay Journal

Topics: People + Society

More than 6 million people live in the Potomac River watershed, but relatively few get the chance to wade into its waters on a regular basis.

That’s why the Potomac Riverkeeper Network started RiverPalooza, a two-month-long series of events giving residents of all backgrounds the opportunity to get on — and even in — the so-called Nation’s River, as well as its major tributary, the Shenandoah.

Not to be confused with the many concerts and festivals that attach the word “palooza” to the name of the nearest waterway, almost all of the 12 events that make up this summer festival involve boating, fishing, wading — and even snorkeling — in the river.

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Whitney Pipkin
May 17, 2018
People + Society
0 Comments

Retired PA forester’s 37-year career with trees bore much fruit

When you spend nearly 40 years working for the same employer, you are bound to experience change. Dan Devlin, Pennsylvania’s state forester and director of the Bureau of Forestry, retired in March with four decades’ worth of...

Donna Morelli
May 02, 2018
People + Society
0 Comments

B4B members continue to grow their environmental impact

Two years ago, the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay kicked off the new Businesses for the Bay Membership Association. Its mission is to encourage businesses to take voluntary, innovative and measurable actions that improve water quality and the...

Corinne Stephens
April 24, 2018
People + Society
0 Comments

African Americans have navigated Bay’s waters since Jamestown

Men of African descent have had a relationship with the navigation and economic trade of the Chesapeake since indentured servants arrived in Jamestown in 1619. From the American Revolutionary War to the War of 1812 and the Civil War, black...

Darius A. Stanton II
April 03, 2018
People + Society
0 Comments

People + Society: Archives

Orth’s work with Bay’s grass has led to high expectations for its recovery (Opinion)

An important Chesapeake Bay paper was published in March in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Written by Jonathan Lefchek, his mentor Robert Orth and a host of Bay scientists, the paper delivers good news that...

Donald Boesch
March 29, 2018
People + Society
0 Comments

Most watershed residents unaware of their role in pollution

About 85 percent of Chesapeake Bay watershed residents think that people working together can fix local water quality problems. Unfortunately, most of them have little idea of what they can do to help and — somewhat contradictorily...

Karl Blankenship
March 28, 2018
People + Society
3 Comments

A growing respect: Plain Sect become more involved in Bay conversation

A small stream flows out of the mountains in Lancaster County, PA, near the Berks County border, with water as clear as a freshly wiped window pane. It winds through woods and over stones, shaded by trees and embraced by undeveloped land....

Donna Morelli
March 14, 2018
Conservation + Land Use,People + Society
1 Comment

Project Clean Stream collects future stewards as well as trash (Opinion)

Every year between March and the first week of June, tens of thousands of volunteers come together to clean up their local communities as a part of the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay’s Project Clean Stream — the largest trash...

Ted Wolfe
March 13, 2018
People + Society,Pollution
0 Comments

Long-buried oyster shells show how the Bay sustained early Americans (Blog)

What can a bunch of old oyster shells tell you about the Chesapeake Bay’s past, and maybe its future? More than you’d think, according to Alex Jansen, a researcher with the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. For...

Timothy B. Wheeler
March 08, 2018
Fisheries,People + Society
7 Comments

Ajax Eastman cared more for planting seeds of conservation than earning laurels (Opinion)

The phone number sticks in my memory, the number I called the most in some 35 years of environmental reporting for the Baltimore Sun. It wasn’t the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or the state departments of Environment or...

Tom Horton
March 06, 2018
People + Society
2 Comments

Farm, its customers know the price of organic meat, produce

It’s not always easy to be the “most famous farmer in America,” a title bestowed on Joel Salatin by the Washington Post in 2013. Salatin’s Polyface Farm, set amid the trundling hills of Shenandoah Valley’s...

William H. Funk
February 26, 2018
Conservation + Land Use,People + Society
1 Comment

DiPasquale’s legacy is leaving a better Chesapeake than the one he inherited

While kayaking in a couple of Chesapeake Bay tributaries last fall, Nick DiPasquale experienced some good news firsthand — by nearly getting stuck. “The grass beds were so thick you basically got hung up in them,” he...

Karl Blankenship
February 20, 2018
People + Society,Politics + Policy
1 Comment

High Tide in Dorchester: A new documentary from the Bay Journal (Blog)

High Tide in Dorchester_16 Minute Version from Chesapeake Bay Journal on Vimeo. Though it begins with aerial shots of the seemingly endless tidal marshes in Maryland’s Dorchester County, the latest Bay Journal documentary is about a...

Whitney Pipkin
February 08, 2018
Climate Change,People + Society
2 Comments

A walk in the woods with a different kind of forester (Opinion)

It’s a chill November morning, the rising sun sloshing light on the tree tops. Larry Walton and I are about a half-mile into the woods that line the Nanticoke River near Vienna, MD, when he wraps his arms around a great old Atlantic...

Tom Horton
January 23, 2018
People + Society
2 Comments

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