Guided hike with rangers at Hartwood Acres Park highlights conservation efforts of women

On a sunny Saturday afternoon in Hartwood Acres Park, a group of hikers followed rangers through wooded trails and grassy meadows to learn about the women who created and maintained the beautiful nature around them — from Rachel Carson’s fight against pesticides to Caren Glotfelty’s work restoring bird habitats.

Hikers who joined the Allegheny County park rangers on Sept. 13 learned about seven women’s conservationist legacies over the course of the 2-mile journey.

Ranger Megan Gauger said the “Women in Conservation” guided hike has been popular before, though it changes a bit depending on which rangers lead the hike. Gauger worked with Rangers Tyler Loper and Jakob Furge to design their iteration of the hike.

“For every hike, we have an outline,” Gauger said. “I was the lead for this hike, so I worked with Tyler and Jakob to make a route that we thought worked best, and then we all got to research the women that we wanted to talk about.”

For the first stop, Loper told the hikers about famous local conservationist and namesake of what was formerly known as the Ninth Street Bridge, Rachel Carson.

“She wrote three books, but ‘Silent Spring’ was one of her most popular and it brought attention to, especially, DDT and other pesticides,” Loper said. “So we use pesticides and herbicides a lot more sparingly nowadays, thanks to Rachel Carson’s work.”

Gauger shared stories about women with special ties to Hartwood, including Carol R. Brown, namesake of the sculpture garden, and Caren Glotfelty, namesake of a wildflower meadow at the park.

As the hikers passed by David Hayes’ “Large Escargot” sculpture, Gauger recounted how Brown became director of Allegheny County’s Bureau of Cultural Programs and brought the sculptures and more to Hartwood Acres, making it a cultural destination.

“Brown is the reason that we have the sculpture garden and also the amphitheater here at Hartwood,” Gauger said. “The sculpture garden has inspired a lot of interest in the park as a whole. Of course, the amphitheater every year brings thousands of people with the summer (concert) series.”

At the Caren Glotfelty Meadow, Gauger said Glotfelty, the former executive director of the Allegheny County Parks Foundation, is the reason for all of Hartwood Acres Park’s chimney swift towers.

“Chimney swift towers help to support the population of chimney swift birds that can really only nest in chimney towers,” Gauger said. “She worked with the Audubon Society to establish 100 of these towers, which made Allegheny County one of the largest concentrations of these towers in the United States.”

Hikers got hands-on in a stream during the stop centered around Ruth Patrick, a scientist who advocated against water pollution and played a significant role in creating the Clean Water Act.

Patrick promoted the “Patrick Principle” — a method of observing the diversity of species within an aquatic ecosystem to evaluate how clean the water is.

“We could bring out a bunch of test chemicals and scientific instruments and measure things,” Loper said. “But the easiest and a very reliable method is what lives in it. So I have here a sheet of a lot of the things that we might find living in our streams, and each one of these is a little bit more sensitive or tolerant to pollution than others. But if we go in and flip some rocks and we find a nice diversity of these creatures, we know the stream is going to be pretty healthy.”

Rangers and hikers found a frog, a crawfish, mayflies, caddisflies and even two water-penny beetles — a rare sight for Loper, who said he had “only ever found one or two before.”

“I can’t believe my eyes. Can you confirm this for me, Jake? I’m pretty sure that’s not just one, but two water-pennies,” Loper said. “This single rock right here just proved to us that we’ve got a healthy stream.”

One participant, Plum resident Nancy King, found out about the hike on Cooper-Siegel Community Library’s website.

“It said, ‘If you’re interested in learning about the history of women in preservation of forestry,’ which I thought was fantastic. And then it said, ‘hike.’ And I’m like, ding, ding, ding! My little feelers went off, and I said, ‘What a nice thing to do,’ ” King said. “If you’re in your 60s like I am, you can still enjoy the outdoors.”

Hiker Annamarie Crelli, also from Plum, said she has been coming to Hartwood Acres Park since it opened.

“It’s probably my favorite county park,” Crelli said. “I think we’re lucky to have all these assets really close and convenient to everybody.”