Conservation Projects
Since the Watershed Coalition was founded, on-the-ground restoration and conservation projects have defined our core mission.
Check out the map of projects that the WCLV has been involved with over the past years.
Strategy
Success
- Partnerships – with other conservation organizations, local businesses, and municipalities, are essential.
- Small demonstration projects are key to building understanding and support for new or unfamiliar practices
- Community involvement is an important ingredient – the more people who are invested in projects near where they work and live, the better the chances for long-term success.
- The long term success of project depends upon maintenance. Stream banks and rain gardens overrun by weeds are unsightly, and detract from conservation messaging.
- Small demonstration projects are key to building understanding and support for new or unfamiliar practices
- The most perfectly designed and planted project will become a failure if not properly cared for.
Conservation Landscape Funded Projects
The Lehigh Valley Greenways, founded in 2004, provides mini-grant funding for projects throughout the Lehigh Valley. In the Poconos, the Pocono Forest and Watershed Landscape also provides mini-grant funding, as does the Schuylkill Highlands Landscape in Bucks, Montgomery, and Berks Counties. The WCLV has accomplished many projects with conservation landscape funding, which originates with the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. A few of the more recent ones are highlighted below – some older projects are also linked.
Hanover Swale
Completed in 2025, collaborating with Hanover Township and the Monocacy Creek Watershed Association, this swale in the municipal parking lot was converted by adding native plants.
Coopersburg Buffer
Additional plantings and educational signage were put in place in the Coopersburg Borough’s Meadow Park
Heller Homestead Trail
Located in Lower Saucon Township, this historical building has a nature trail that is being rehabilitated, with new plantings being added.
More Lehigh Valley Greenways Funded Projects
DCNR Multifunctional Riparian Buffer
The Department of Conservation and Natural Resources has long advocated for the environmental impact of full-height forest and meadow streamside buffers. Grant funding was offered to pilot an approach to ‘multifunctional buffers,’ plantings that would have a positive impact on water quality while offering farmers the chance to have a cash crop on otherwise marginal land. The WCLV applied for, and received a multifunctional buffer grant in 2019 on the Link Farm.
Misty Valley – Link Farm
Using funds from the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources multifunctional buffer program, in 2018 the WCLV partnered with a local farmer to convert frequently flooded streamside property into cropland for nut trees. Click on the photo to watch a video describing the project.
Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land – Aldo Leopold