Category: People, Places & Parks

By Jared Teutsch, Executive Director Birdwatching exploded in popularity during the pandemic as people began noticing the birds around their homes and in nearby parks and greenspaces. Suddenly, birdwatching is cool! Along with the uptick in birdwatching came an interest in creating bird-friendly landscapes at home and in our local parks and greenspaces. The most […]

By Ruth Pimentel, Park Pride’s Project Manager for Atlanta Community Schoolyards Second grade students at Sarah Smith Elementary School’s Primary Campus have been working hard over the past year. Partnering with professional landscape architects at Park Pride and The Trust for Public Land, these young creatives have collaborated on a design process to create a […]

By: Stacy Funderburke Finding the Flint is an ambitious initiative to restore Georgia’s Flint River near its headwaters at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the world’s busiest airport, and connect headwaters communities and a variety of partners and funders to larger landscape scale conservation downstream. Our Finding the Flint Coordinator, Hannah Palmer, is an incredible champion […]

By Jared Teutsch, Executive Director Bird migration is one of the most amazing feats in the natural world. Each fall and spring, billions of birds take to the skies, avoiding predators, and dodging turbulent weather as they travel between breeding grounds in the north and wintering grounds in the Caribbean or Central and South America. […]

As the largest greenspace along the BeltLine, Westside Park is a critical component of the larger BeltLine vision. By Rob Brawner, Executive Director of Atlanta BeltLine Partnership The opening of Westside Park – the largest jewel on the BeltLine Emerald Necklace – has generated much excitement and is the result of years of hard work […]

By Michael Halicki, Executive Director, Park Pride Last month, Park Pride and several environmental nonprofit partners hosted the Mayoral Forum on Greenspace, the culmination of our collective efforts to educate and hear from Atlanta’s next Mayor, (whomever it might be) on the importance and the complexity of parks and greenspace issues. Now, you can visit […]

New film highlights the Swamp and mining proposal The Georgia Conservancy continues to express serious concerns regarding a proposed heavy mineral mine near the edge of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge in southeast Georgia. In late 2020, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) announced that under the Trump Administration’s recently-adapted Clean Water Act guidance, […]

Michael O’Reilly, Director of Policy and Climate Strategy, Georgia, The Nature Conservancy Several new reports this summer have painted a sobering view of the challenges we face in combatting climate change.  Coupled with the unprecedented weather events wreaking havoc around the world, the situation can feel overwhelming for many of us.  Yet, amid challenge, there […]

By Jared Teutsch, Executive Director Birds are a catalyst for conservation. Easy to see and hear wherever you are—in parks and greenspaces, in our yards, on city sidewalks, and beyond—birds provide an entry point into nature appreciating and understanding the challenges we all face to protect these spaces, in the city and beyond.  Georgia Audubon […]

By Michael Halicki, Park Pride’s Executive Director Park Pride and our greenspace partners have been hard at work through the better part of this year attempting to develop a rapport with the next Mayor of the City of Atlanta. The challenge, at this particular point in time, is that we don’t know who that person […]

The Conservation Fund works on behalf of city and county partners to purchase land for parks, greenspaces, and trails that will be permanently protected for public use and environmental sustainability. We have protected greenspace as a foundational component of bettering the quality of life for every Atlantan and provided grant funding to support equitable development of parks in partnership with non-profits […]

Submitted by: Host Partners of the Mayoral Forum on Greenspace Atlanta is the “City in the Forest,” built upon a network of creeks and streams on the banks of the Chattahoochee, with a growing network of parks, trails, and natural spaces that connect communities. Throughout the pandemic, parks and recreation centers emerged as cornerstones of […]

By Sara Gottlieb, Director of Freshwater Science & Strategy, The Nature Conservancy Georgia is home to an incredibly diverse community of aquatic life – we have more species of fish, crayfish, mussels, and salamanders in our rivers than almost anywhere else on the North American continent.  Georgia also has more barriers that prevent fish and […]

By Katherine Moore, Vice President of Programs and Sustainable Growth Program Director, The Georgia Conservancy & Nick Johnson, Senior Planner, The Georgia Conservancy Depending on how you look at it, Georgia is a study in contrasts. On one hand, Georgia is experiencing tremendous growth. According to the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budgeting, Georgia is […]