How a mother of three switched from her career in finance to founding a popular compost pickup service.

By: Gwenn Nolan, Founder of Mother Compost

I grew up in Willistown, rambling through what is now Kirkwood Preserve. Life has a way of bringing us full circle. Though I no longer live in Willistown, my work now focuses on protecting our planet—likely inspired by a childhood spent immersed in nature.

Years ago, while working in financial services nearby, I found myself at a crossroads with an idea so absurd it made me laugh: “I should start a composting company.” With two toddlers rejecting meals left and right, I was sickened by our food waste. My attempt at backyard composting failed (see: full-time job, two toddlers, baby on the way), but it sparked a thought: If composting were easier, more people would do it. We’d reduce waste, recycle food, and maybe even change the world.

A quick test run confirmed it—people wanted this. So, I took the road less traveled, waking at
2:30 a.m. to collect food scraps in my Ford Ranger, getting them to the farm before showering, wrangling kids, and heading to work. A year later, I hired my first employee. Five years on, Mother Compost has grown from a solo project to a small but mighty team of eight, serving over 1,500 households and 35 businesses.

The road has been winding and at times uncertain, but as Frost wrote, taking the one less traveled has made all the difference. At Mother Compost, we believe small choices create big impacts—and that anyone, at any time, can be the change they wish to see in the world.

Are you interested in composting with Mother Compost? Use the link below to see if you’re residence is within the pickup/delivery service area and start your composting journey.

By: Aaron Coolman

Photos courtesy of Brock and Sherri Fenton

I have spent much time over the last twelve months researching Northern Saw-whet Owls, banding and tracking them around eastern North America. The Northern Saw-whet Owl Migratory Connectivity Project utilizes the Motus network that WCT has worked tirelessly to build and maintain since 2016, deploying Nanotags on saw-whets that will provide tracking data on individuals for nearly two years. My research sent me in pursuit of breeding and migratory hotspots for this secretive species, where I found myself in the remote reaches of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Ontario’s boreal forests, to the granite balds and deep fjord river systems of Quebec’s Saguenay region on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River, to coastal and montane banding stations in Maine and Pennsylvania, respectively. Additionally, scientists in West Virginia and Nova Scotia invited me to investigate and track breeding saw-whets at their local study sites.

In all, I drove over 5,000 miles visiting different locations and researchers- the effort has paid off in a big way. The resulting dataset is the largest and most successful telemetry project ever conducted on Northern Saw-whet Owls, and the battery life on all of the Nanotags still have at least 12 more months of power. So far, there have been:

• 124 Nanotag deployments.
• 61 movement detections.
• 5 locations deployed over 10 Nanotags during fall migration.
• 1 location deployed 22 Nanotags during post-breeding dispersal. 
• 2 locations deployed 3 Nanotags on actively breeding owls. 
• One individual has been detected in the same location for over 100 days and is likely a year-round resident at this location, which has never before been documented.
• 10 owls have flown over 500km during fall migration, some of which have traveled nearly 1,000km.

It was an exhilarating field season, meeting scores of other biologists, scientists, conservationists, and volunteers while having the opportunity to see new landscapes that I had only ever read about or seen photos of. However, the off-season was not long as I have already begun the next (and last) season of fieldwork for this project. Throughout the winter I will be spending my weekends banding and tracking Northern Saw-whet Owls at Powdermill Avian Research Center outside of Pittsburgh, and at Assateague Island National Seashore in Worcester County, MD. For these efforts, I will deploy radio Motus tags that will last nearly two years, and GPS tags that will provide super-precise location data for up to a year.

The primary goal of the project is to determine if Northern Saw-whet Owls utilize the same migration corridors year-to-year, or if they prefer a nomadic approach. Secondary objectives include describing the potential for a residential breeding population of saw-whets in the Central Appalachians of Pennsylvania, in addition to documenting spring migration departure dates. I have created a 2024 Summary providing visual snippets of the results from the project thus far, and a sneak peek into what the plans are for 2025.

**Data published in this blog are current as of 5 February 2025.

By Blake Goll, Education Programs Manager at Willistown Conservation Trust

Do you remember excitedly chasing the glow of fireflies through your yard on summer evenings, as they traced those distinctive J-shapes in the sky? Do you have fond memories from your youth of a cheery robin’s song waking you from your slumber each morning? Maybe you recall spending hours in the garden, courageously catching bumblebees in your little bug box and marveling over those gorgeous monarch butterflies sporting their striking Halloween colors of orange and black. Did you flip rocks in the woods and delight over the prehistoric-looking salamanders you found peering back at you? Did your grandmother show you which berries you could pick from the brambles at the edge of the yard and pop in your mouth for a juicy snack? Children nowadays stand to lose these eminent memories from their identities, and in fact, many already have.

The lurid scene we’ve fostered over the past human lifetime is a monotonous patchwork of largely lifeless manicured lawn—nonnative Kentucky bluegrass—dotted with whatever ornamental trees and shrubs we randomly chose from the nearest nursery. We dump more diabolic chemicals—pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers—onto our yards than some agricultural areas do, and we fearfully say “yes” to any mosquito busting Joe Schmoe who vows to eliminate the pesky critters from our sacred domains. We oblige to mowing our yards weekly so as not to be cast out of our neighborhood tribe. Meanwhile, monarch butterflies are on track to be listed under the Endangered Species Act, insect populations as a whole have suffered 80% declines in the past few decades, and birds have disappeared by almost 30% in the past 50 years. Myriad factors contribute to these harrowing losses of biodiversity, from agricultural intensification to pesticides, but the underlying element is pervasive loss and degradation of habitat.

Fortunately, our yards hold the keys to restoring some of this lost habitat and with it, those precious childhood memories. Every one of us, whether you have just an apartment balcony or a full 4-acre lawn, can contribute significantly toward this new responsibility of reviving our shared ecosystem. It’s a simple formula that starts with the plants. Native plants. Zach Leahan, local Malvern resident and a Director at PwC, recognized this five years ago. He was growing disgruntled about following the traditional lawn care path and superficially choosing plants based only on aesthetics. Something didn’t feel right. Soon he happened upon the Willistown Conservation Trust’s homeowner habitat initiative, which provided him with resources on the importance of native plants, including shortlists of beneficial plants. He began viewing his property in a new light, with the intricate connections between plants, insects, birds, and ourselves at the forefront of his mind.

Native plants, because they evolved with local wildlife over millennia, are the pillars of a finespun web of life—attracting and supporting our native pollinators and other insects that in turn support the birds and the rest of the food chain. (Invasive plants, on the other hand, can wreak havoc on our ecosystems because they often outcompete natives once they’re free from the diseases and insects that keep them under control in their countries of origin.) As Zach delved deeper into the benefits of native plants and started analyzing their ecological attributes, he was determined to honor those childhood memories of chasing fireflies and picking raspberries. In addition to incorporating native plants into his own yard, he used his background in technology to make the native plant journey more accessible to everyone.

He founded ChooseNativePlants.com, a mobile-friendly web application that helps PA residents find native plants that fit the needs of their home. Complete with intelligent search options from plant color to pollinators attracted, the website features beautiful images of Pennsylvania natives and acts like a “knowledgeable neighbor” ready with the perfect plant. While there are now many native plant lists and resources, this app’s standout feature is that it bridges the gap between native plant discovery and purchase, listing over twenty all-native nurseries in Pennsylvania. Zach envisions a community where we all plant with purpose.

Replacing mowed lawn areas with native wildflowers and grasses—and embracing the buzz they attract is a great step toward restoring the balance to our environment. Landscaping with native trees and shrubs in well-planted beds where leaves are allowed to rest is paramount as well. (90% of caterpillars that develop on trees drop to the ground below for part of their life cycle.) Native plants are the answer. The insects they attract are the proof. If we simply continue as we have, we stand to lose nature. If we lose nature, we lose ourselves. Choose native plants.

Visit choosenativeplants.com to find which native shrubs, plants and flowers from Pennsylvania have the right conditions to flourish in your garden. ChooseNativePlants.com is an open-source project with a volunteer team. This team is preparing for the next major update in the spring. If you have interest in supporting the project, sign up for a “Code for Philly” account to join the project’s Slack channel.

Willistown Conservation Trust is an accredited nonprofit land trust that focuses on 28,000 acres in Chester and Delaware Counties. It has permanently conserved 7,500 acres since 1996 and offers six renowned programs for public engagement and research: Bird Conservation, Community Farm, Education and Outreach, Land Protection, Stewardship and Watershed Protection. For more habitat at home resources and inspiration, visit WCTrust.org and follow @WCTrust.

How the American Beaver Mitigates Drought Impact

By: Sarah Barker

As we near the end of what is shaping up to be the hottest year in documented history, one of nature’s most impactful (and adorable) engineers is working hard to keep our ecosystems green. The American beaver (Castor canadensis) may be our saving grace as drought and wildfires become more frequent due to the growing climate crisis. Research conducted over the past few decades reveals the profound positive influence beavers have on their habitats across the country, even in extreme conditions. Whether they are meandering through Pennsylvania temperate forests (Margolis et al., 2001), arid landscapes in Nevada (Fairfax & Small, 2018), or habitats west of the Rockies (Fairfax & Whittle, 2020), the importance of beaver activity in building environmental resilience cannot be ignored.

Beavers are herbivorous and semiaquatic mammals, they eat woody vegetation, fruits, and herbaceous plants like skunk cabbage or sedges, and they live both on land and in the water. Beavers are renowned in the animal kingdom for their impressive constructions made from chewed trees, shrubs, and miscellaneous found materials. While large dams may be their calling card, they also build homes called lodges into the banks of water bodies, food caches to sustain them through the winter, and trails and canals for transporting food and building materials.

By building successive dams in the same stretch of a river or stream, beavers can sustain or create wetlands even during intense drought; a behavior we have observed at WCT’s Ashbridge Preserve! Beavers are slow and clumsy on land but are graceful swimmers. Therefore, higher water levels provide easier access to food and less risk of predation. Beavers are also fantastic stewards! They chew down local invasive plants like privet and grapevine for their dams while selectively foraging twigs from natives like black willow or red osier dogwood so that they may produce many more shoots in the following growing seasons. This behavior helps maintain native plant populations as invasive species become increasingly common.

These benefits increase ecosystem biodiversity, organism abundance, and water quality with the impact being so significant that it can be observed by NASA satellites! Green can be seen spreading outward from beaver dams into the surrounding floodplains while other areas without beaver activity wilt under extreme conditions. A study based in Nevada found that in areas where beaver dams had been established, the rate of water evaporation was significantly lower compared to environments lacking beaver activity (Fairfax & Small, 2018). This means that water stays in the ecosystem for longer, and during drought this is critical. Increased water retention supports environmental resilience, with hydrated soils and vegetation being more resistant to wildfires, storms, and erosion, and providing more favorable conditions for wildlife. Depending on the region, increased water level and retention can also allow for the dilution of concentrated salts and nutrients, providing more time for them to be absorbed and broken down, lessening their impact on the environment as a result.

As temperatures continue to rise with each passing year and the weather becomes increasingly unpredictable, these friendly rodents provide fortification and solace for wildlife and humans alike. While they may have a historical reputation as a nuisance, their beneficial environmental impacts are undeniable. Beavers are our allies in the fight to protect and remediate our environment and they sure do look cute doing it!

References:

Dewey, C., Fox, P. M., Bouskill, N. J., Dwivedi, D., Nico, P., & Fendorf, S. (2022). Beaver dams 

overshadow climate extremes in controlling riparian hydrology and water quality. Nature 

Communications, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-34022-0 

Fairfax, E., & Small, E. E. (2018). Using remote sensing to assess the impact of beaver damming 

on riparian evapotranspiration in an arid landscape. Ecohydrology, 11(7). 

https://doi.org/10.1002/eco.1993

Fairfax, E., & Whittle, A. (2020). Smokey the Beaver: Beaver‐dammed riparian corridors stay 

green during wildfire throughout the Western United States. Ecological 

Applications, 30(8). https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.2225 

Hood, G. A., & Bayley, S. E. (2008). Beaver (Castor canadensis) mitigate the effects of climate 

on the area of open water in boreal wetlands in Western Canada. Biological 

Conservation, 141(2), 556–567. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2007.12.003 

Margolis, B. E., Castro, M. S., & Raesly, R. L. (2001). The impact of Beaver Impoundments on 

the Water Chemistry of two Appalachian streams. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and 

Aquatic Sciences, 58(11), 2271–2283. https://doi.org/10.1139/f01-166 

NASA. (n.d.). NASA data helps Beavers build back streams. NASA. 

https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Beavers_Build_Back_Streams

Rosell, F., & Campbell-Palmer, R. (2022). Beavers: Ecology, behaviour, conservation, and 

Management. Oxford University Press. 

Willistown Conservation Trust to Establish Kestrel Hill Preserve

By: Kate Etherington, President and Executive Director

Willistown Conservation Trust (WCT) is delighted to announce the award of a $1 million grant from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR). This transformative funding will support the protection of 90 acres of undeveloped land, culminating in the creation of a new public nature preserve: Kestrel Hill Preserve.

Named in honor of the American Kestrel—a native species that has faced significant population decline across North America but thrives in the grassland meadows protected by WCT—this preserve will serve as a vital refuge for wildlife and a place for people to reconnect with nature.

Without conservation intervention, zoning would have permitted up to 40 new houses on this pristine land. Instead, Kestrel Hill Preserve will feature rolling hills, scenic vistas, mature woodlands, and wetlands within an area designated by Audubon as an internationally recognized Important Bird Area. Visitors will enjoy a network of trails designed for hiking, birdwatching, equestrian activities, picnicking, and quiet reflection—offering respite from the fast pace of modern life.

This achievement would not have been possible without the leadership and vision of Governor Josh Shapiro, State Representative Melissa Shusterman, Secretary Cindy Dunn, and the dedicated team at the DCNR, particularly the Community Conservation Partnerships Program. The Commonwealth joins Willistown Township and Chester County in their financial support, as well as many other community members who have pledged their support of this significant project. Their commitment to conserving vulnerable wildlife habitats and preserving Pennsylvania’s extraordinary natural beauty has made this project a reality. 

Representative Shusterman emphasized the importance of this effort:
“Preserving green spaces is essential to our overall quality of life. These spaces provide critical habitats for wildlife, help regulate our climate, and offer opportunities for recreation and relaxation. Kestrel Hill Preserve represents a meaningful investment in the future of our community.”

Since 1996, Willistown Conservation Trust has protected and managed over 7,500 acres throughout Chester and Delaware Counties, including four public nature preserves—soon to be five with the addition of Kestrel Hill Preserve. Open 365 days a year from dawn to dusk, these preserves are free for all to enjoy. To learn more about Willistown Conservation Trust’s conservation programs—including bird and water research, land stewardship, and its community-supported farm—or to contribute to the $12.5 million campaign supporting the establishment of Kestrel Hill Preserve, please visit https://wctrust.org/future-preserve/.