9/27 10 a.m. Sunny & warm
Christina riverfront, Wilmington - DuPont Environmental Education Center
We started our final naturalist certification class, on aquatic ecosystems, in a new location, the DuPont Environmental Education Center, managed by Delaware Nature Society. Lesley runs the education programs at DEEC, and she was our guide for this half of the day, which would end by exploring the aquatic ecosystems at Ashland. She gave us a bit of history and an overview from DEEC’s third floor balcony, overlooking the Russell Peterson Wildlife Refuge that makes up this corner of Delaware’s biggest city.
The building has been open for five years, and the marsh refuge and education center took a decade to become reality. Lesley said former Gov. Russell Peterson, then in his 80s, attended the opening celebration and said one sentence about it being nice to get it done, then immediately turned to his current concern, saying “now we need to talk about climate change.” It seems to me that his attitude, as much as his legacy embodied in the Coastal Zone Preservation Act, make Gov. Peterson a terrific person to have named the marsh after.
