A sparse, high-ceiling room at the Penn Hills Library is where Maria Wheeler-Dubas often finds herself explaining nature’s most captivating quirks and mysteries, such as dolphins’ apparent ability to pass information from one generation to the next.

“Do dolphins have culture?” Wheeler-Dubas wondered last month at a presentation on animal behavior, slipping into a squeaky pitch that comes out for especially fun facts. “I don’t know.”

About 15 people, mostly seniors, came to the library to learn how animals communicate, care for their young and choose their homes. Jean Strycula and her husband, Eugene, were among them.

Before Wheeler-Dubas got started, the Plum residents confessed about their obsession with the birds, squirrels and other small critters that frequent their yard.

“We’re animal lovers,” Jean Strycula said. “We sit out there every morning with our coffee, and we throw stuff out to see the animals.”

That’s exactly the kind of human behavior Wheeler-Dubas, 38, of Penn Hills hopes to encourage through Backyard Nature, her one-woman show that officially received nonprofit status about a year ago. Its mission, to connect people with nature, isn’t too far from her day job as the science education outreach manager at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Schenley Park.

“I think our wild world, whether it’s in Penn Hills or in a tropical rain forest or on the African savanna, I think it’s all wonderful in its own ways,” Wheeler-Dubas said.

Backyard Nature offers programs for all ages, from family birding walks to adult-oriented classes on butterflies to an upcoming writing class, where kids will learn “what makes a really meaningful story about nature,” Wheeler-Dubas said.

Most classes take place at libraries and senior centers in Penn Hills and Monroeville, though she occasionally ventures into other communities in the Pittsburgh area. The goal is to reach as many people as possible.

“When I develop nature education content, I want to make sure it’s accessible to everyone,” Wheeler-Dubas said. “There’s no such thing as dumbing it down. That’s a dirty phrase.”

A natural connection

Wheeler-Dubas began her origin story like this: “I’ve pretty much always been a little nerd.”

She recalled that one of the first books she ever read on her own was about whales.

“I remember that, even then, I was just as excited to read about whales as to run around and tell everybody about what I just read,” Wheeler-Dubas said.

After graduating from Otterbein University, then Duquesne with a doctorate in biology, Wheeler-Dubas split her time between working at the Pittsburgh Zoo and teaching biology labs at Pitt.

She took a full-time position at Phipps in 2016, but only once the pandemic hit did she have an “aha” moment.

“I had thrown together a few safe, socially distanced hikes for folks from my church,” she said. “I just thought, ‘This is something I could do in Penn Hills.’ ”

She started offering classes and excursions through the Penn Hills Library in spring 2022. About a year later, she initiated the process to register Backyard Nature as a 501(c)(3).

Wheeler-Dubas has joined an array of environmentally-minded organizations with a foothold in Penn Hills, such as the Penn Hills Shade Tree Commission and Tree Pittsburgh, that she said she “can watch and learn from.”

Now, she is applying for several grants to help fund a nature center in the municipality that might include an event space, a campground and a network of low-grade trails accessible to novice hikers and people with disabilities.

“One of the reasons that I dream about a small nature center in Penn Hills: I love the idea that nature isn’t something that’s far away in a national park or some place that we visit on vacation,” she said. “It can be a small space in our own backyards.”

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