Lightning Updates

Written by Jonathan L. DohertyAfter writing weekly Lightning Updates for almost three years, I’m about to enter a new post-full-time-job phase of life. Perhaps you will pardon my using this and next week’s updates for some personal observations. Here’s part I. I’ve...

On Earth Day 2021, we offer these words from the poet Julie Cadwallader-Staub. Praying In the garden early, I'mtransplanting echinacea while robins and flycatchers confirm that our winter--complicated and compoundedby COVID--has succumbed to spring at last. I'm...

How many birds are killed by vehicles along a single stretch of rural highway? (Photos: above -- Janet Griffin/Shutterstock; below -- Jay Falstad)From time to time, these updates share information that may not be the best of news, but does shed light on the importance...

News and images of this week’s closures of the National Mall and its memorials, the U.S. Capitol, and public streets in Washington are arresting. And yet, there have been so many dramatic images from public open space in the past year.  Park closures from the...

As we start a new year -- following one that was so many things, but above all eye opening -- it seems like a good time to think about how we make 2021 an improvement. Yes, new year resolutions can get tiresome, but they’re really just setting out some goals. Things...

Senator Paul Sarbanes, second from left, launching the first Chesapeake Gateways in 2000.By Jonathan DohertyPaul S. Sarbanes, United States Senator from Maryland from 1977 to 2007, died on December 6. Much is already being written about this effective, kind, and...

John Maounis, with his beloved wife Margaret Bursaw, early this year at Tomales Bay in California.By Jonathan DohertyJohn Maounis, former superintendent of the National Park Service Chesapeake Office, and original co-convener of the Chesapeake Conservation...

About seven years ago community residents began organizing to turn a decaying, abandoned park space into a new model community park in Baltimore. Find out more in this video.(Photo: Bernard C. Jack Young/Twitter) Over the past six months, Lightning Updates have...

"We Need to Talk: Conserving Land for Public Health, Equity, and Access to Nature” kicked off the Partnership's 2020 Annual Meeting with a candid conversation among a distinguished group of professionals.We need to engage a new, intentionally inclusive generation of...

Black American watermen dominated the oyster fleets in Virginia during the late 1800s. This photo was taken along the York River around 1900. (Photo: The Mariner's Museum)Almost a year ago, we reported on the Chesapeake Conservation Partnership's 2019 Annual Meeting...