The green country town

By Michael DiBerardinis

Fishing in the Schuylkill, family fun runs in Hunting Park, hiking in the Pennypack, evening campfires, relaxing on a neighborhood park bench, bird-watching, biking along Cobbs Creek, tending a community garden, enjoying the shade of a street tree - these are just some of the fond experiences we all share thanks to our world-class Philadelphia parks and forests.

Philadelphia is an urban ecosystem that includes nature and humans, highways and waterways, buildings and forests, all of which work together as a single system. Major portions of this system, Philadelphia's parkland forests and public open spaces, have benefited from years of preservation, stewardship, and restoration through faithful care by the Department of Parks and Recreation and many local partners, including nearly a hundred community friends groups.

However, in order to keep our urban forest and parks healthy, additional efforts are needed. Think of our urban ecosystem like your own house or car: both require care and attention. If you don't invest in and properly maintain them, they will deteriorate over time. Ignore the roof on your house, and it will leak. Ignore the dashboard warning light, and you could break down. Our urban ecosystem is just like that. In this case, though, it is a car we share, a house we all call home. Failure to care for it comes at a collective cost.

There is a tipping point at which a damaged ecosystem will cease to provide public benefits such as improved water quality, energy savings, cleaner air, and increased property values. Our parkland forests and public open spaces provide significant economic and social benefit to the city. According to the U.S. Forest Service, Philadelphia's urban tree canopy removes almost 500,000 metric tons of carbon from our air, at an estimated value close to $10 million.

With the benefits so great and the costs of doing nothing so high, now is the time to come together to care for our urban ecosystem at the highest level.

The Department of Parks and Recreation has been working with national experts and local community members over the past five years to create strategies to improve the health, usability, and long-term viability of our forests, riverfronts, trails, recreation centers, and parks. We have learned that to effectively manage and preserve our natural lands, we need to adopt new maintenance models, redesign spaces, engage deeper with communities, and plant more trees. This makes sense and saves dollars.

Everyone has a role to play in ensuring the future of Philadelphia's forests. No open space is too small to contribute to this important effort. Actions that property owners take in their own yards can benefit their neighborhood and the city. Planting a yard tree, creating community green spaces, cleaning up a neighborhood park, using compost to enrich soil, caring for a street tree, and adding a rain garden to a parking lot are just a few examples of the individual actions that enhance a broader effort that benefits us all.

We hope you will join us to celebrate Philadelphia's urban ecosystem at 6 p.m. on Oct. 7 at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University (1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway). We will also introduce the Department of Parks and Recreation's new Ecosystem and Parkland Forest Management Framework, which will help guide the care of our natural resources over the next decade. In support of this framework, several pilot projects will be rolled out in communities all over Philadelphia to help demonstrate a role for everyone in restoring Philadelphia's forests.

This is important work. The competitive cities of the future will be places that care about their natural resources. They are places where people want to live, work, and play. Join this partnership as we work to improve both the Philadelphia of today and of tomorrow.