 Educators of all types and backgrounds are encouraged to attend the special full-day Ripple Effect Environmental Literacy Convening event on Tuesday, June 17, 2025, in Williamsport.
“The convening is the culmination of multiple years of effort to create a Northcentral Pennsylvania Environmental Literacy hub where formal and non-formal educators can interact with the shared goal to increase environmental literacy to both K-12 students and their communities,” said hub coordinator Colleen Epler-Ruths of the Central Susquehanna Intermediate Unit. “Other hubs around the state have done similar events last summer, so we wanted to offer that same opportunity to our region.” The event will begin at Lycoming College’s Heim Building and include a morning rotation of breakout sessions designed to give teachers of all types new tools and opportunities to incorporate the new STEELS (Science, Technology & Engineering, and Environmental Literacy and Sustainability) standards into classrooms from public school to homeschool and every variation in between. This will be followed by rotations across three local environmental education venues and then a wrap-up opportunity for fellowship with food aboard the Hiawatha Paddleboat.
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 In this photo by Edward Knowles III, of Mullica Hill, NJ, an Eastern hellbender interacts with a dead trout along a tributary of the West Branch of the Susquehanna River. According to longtime species researcher Dr. Peter Petokas, hellbenders do not eat trout. Impressed with the growing number of fascinating posts of wildlife photography on social media, Edward Knowles III, of Mullica Hill, NJ, picked up a Canon R8 camera with 600 mm lens just two weeks ago, self-educating himself on ways to improve his photography and editing abilities.
On May 19, he was offered the perfect subject to hone those skills. “I was with a group of guys fishing and we found a dead trout along the shore that laid there about an hour without any activity when suddenly a large salamander came up and approached the trout,” he said. “He came up, checked it out, grabbed it by the head and pulled it into the water. Once he got into the stream, he separated from it and dispersed. It all happened so quickly that I only got two photos.”  According to Susquehanna County Conservation District Program Coordinator Don Hibbard, the key to making a difference in our day-to-day lives for the sake of protecting natural resources can come down to observation.
“I like to encourage people to ask a simple question when they are about to throw something away – where is away?” he said. “Maybe that will encourage you to recycle more instead of throwing garbage away because a lot of times, our trash ends up in places we don’t realize and a lot of those facilities don’t process garbage the right way.” So mindfully thinking about how you dispose of things or reuse them can be vital, as well as planting trees. |
AuthorsRiverkeeper John Zaktansky is an award-winning journalist and avid promoter of the outdoors who loves camping, kayaking, fishing and hunting with the family. Archives
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