I grew up in Akron in the 1980s – the decade the Rubber City lost 8,000 factory jobs and the Ohio exurbs swallowed 13 acres of farmland per hour. Despite growing up in nadir of the Rust Belt’s environmental health and biodiversity ...
On a desolate January night last year, as the snow fell in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, I got up from the dinner table, threw my cross-country skis in the car and headed to the Towpath Trail.
They’re out there, floating on the wind. Hundreds of thousands of gulls stop over in the Great Lakes each winter on migrations from the Canadian Arctic to the Gulf or Atlantic Coasts.
I grew up in a tiny rural township, ten minutes outside of Akron, Ohio in a neighborhood surrounded by looming second-growth hardwoods and whispering cornfields.
The headwaters of Northeast Ohio’s three iconic rivers--Chagrin, Cuyahoga and Grand--spring out of Geauga County. This rural landscape 30 miles east of Cleveland also contains 1,000 acres of kettle bogs and fens.
Most people don’t like bugs. They are so disconcertingly unlike us – we can’t find ourselves in all those legs, wings and alien faces. Also, our sense of scale prevents us from seeing the vibrant and complex world of insects.
On a sunny summer afternoon, the City of Cleveland buzzes with a frenetic energy you can only observe from the waterfront, where the Cuyahoga meets the Great Lake.
Better parenting through salamanders, dragonflies and spiders.
Thousands flock to a marsh outside Toledo for a glimpse of tiny birds making a three-thousand-mile commute.