A Brighter Future for the Chesapeake

As a child growing up in Maryland where the Susquehanna River meets the Chesapeake Bay, Deanna Mitchell's mother gave her a Harriet Tubman pin. Neither mother nor daughter could know that one day Mitchell would return to the Chesapeake as the National Park Service Superintendent of the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park. Join us for this conversation as we learn more about the remarkable life of Harriet Tubman, the Underground Railroad, Black history on Maryland's Eastern Shore, and Mitchell's homecoming.

In this episode, Joel Dunn's conversation with Rich Batiuk, a Chesapeake Conservancy board member who recently as the associate director for science, analysis, and implementation at the United States Environmental Protection Agency's Chesapeake Bay Program Office, explores how to revolutionize the Chesapeake Bay cleanup by shifting it from effort-based to performance-based metrics.

A new year and new Administration will bring us even closer toward achieving our conservation goals. In this episode, meet Executive Vice President Mark Conway who recently joined our team. Hear our exciting plans to help inspire new conservationists to restore the health of the Bay and ignite our efforts to conserve 30% of the Chesapeake's lands by 2030.    

Information and technology is democratizing conservation and empowering people everywhere to protect the environment where they live. It is literally up to us now--you and me. 

We need you, Wall Street. The government can't fund the Chesapeake's cleanup on its own. It's going to take private investment to get the job done. The future of our Chesapeake Bay, and indeed our plant, depends on it. 

A hero to many conservationists, E.O. Wilson from Harvard University, has called for the protection of half the earth to protect biodiversity. Using precision conservation, we can do this in the Chesapeake, conserving 30% by 2030 and 50% by 2050. Imagine the legacy we can leave behind. 

We live in a brave new world where information is power. Think about what big data did for the banking and health care industries. Imagine if we cold do the same for conservation...We are. It's called precision conservation. 

Cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay is one of the largest and longest running ecosystem restoration efforts in the world. Over the last 50 years, we've invested billions to restore the Bay, and the world is watching to see how the Chesapeake responds. Chesapeake Matters takes an in depth look at what's working for the Chesapeake, and what's not.