Educational Resources

Five Ways to Appreciate the Outdoors from Inside

Here are five ways to appreciate the outdoors from inside! 1.Wildlife Watching: Look out your window!   The spring is a wonderful time to look out your window and admire the wildlife. Animals are coming out of hibernation and feeling active. Birds are probably waking you up in the morning with their chirps or you hear …

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Three “Ask Me Anything” Videos from Alliance Staff

As Alliance staff continue to work from home, we have been exploring ways to share some of our expertise in new ways. One way that we have done this is through “Ask Me Anything” Facebook Live sessions. Participants were able to take part in these virtual Q&A sessions to gain a deeper knowledge of the …

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April Quarantine Activity: Removing Spotted Lanternfly Eggs Before They Hatch

April showers bring…the Spotted Lanternfly? Unfortunately, yes. The arrival of warmer, Spring weather also means the arrival of Spotted Lanternfly as late April marks the beginning of the species’ egg hatching season. Originally from China, India, Bangladesh, and Vietnam, the Spotted Lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) was first found in the United States in 2014 in Berks …

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Oysters in Your Backyard

“I now have a bat house, a duck house, and essentially an oyster house.” -My dad, after we finished putting the oysters in off our dock. After about 20 years of living on the Eastern Shore, my dad has grown a fondness for the wildlife in the area. In October I wrote an article titled, …

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Sustainable Food for Thought

When you’re out ordering dinner at a restaurant, do you stop to consider the source of your food? Whether it’s vegetables or prime rib or a crab cake, it’s not hard to imagine that “eating local’ can benefit the overall community.

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Winter Watershed Activities to Get You Through the Cold Months

Don’t let the cold weather get you down! The Chesapeake Bay watershed has plenty of activities and beauty to experience even when it seems impossible to leave the house. Check out a few ways to break your cabin fever. 1. Visit a Maritime Museum: There are plenty of Maritime Museums within the watershed that are …

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Four Simple Ways to Greenify your Office in 2020

It is easy during the hustle and bustle of your everyday life at the office to not think twice before throwing away something that could have been recycled. While it may seem like a hassle to make your office “green,” here are four simple steps your office can take to help improve your carbon footprint …

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Don’t Let Invasive Plants “Return From the Dead”!

Invasive plants have a lot in common with zombies. They’re dangerous, hard to dispatch, and have a tendency to surround and overwhelm even the most prudent landowner. Sometimes slowly, sometimes alarmingly fast, they will take over every inch of a property if left alone. Invasive plants are also specialists at “returning from the dead”. Simply …

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Decomposers: The Creepy Crawly Critters of our Chesapeake Forests

It’s alive! The forest floor, that is. When walking through the woods we mostly see leaves, sticks, and other dead plant material on the ground. That layer of “duff” is teeming with life though, and that’s a very good thing. The tiny organisms of our forest floor are members of the ecosystem that are just …

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Forests for the BATS, Part 1

Bats are typically associated with caves, attics, and Halloween, not trees. However, all 15 of the bat species within the Chesapeake Bay Watershed use forest habitat for breeding, foraging, and/or shelter. They are a critical part of forest ecosystems, each daily consuming nearly their own body weight in insects and filling a similar ecological niche …

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