Protecting Land, Birds, Watersheds, and Local Habitats with Kate Etherington

Liam Dempsey: Welcome to Start Local, where we talk with business owners, leaders of nonprofits, and other members of our community focused on doing business in and around Chester County, Pennsylvania. Each episode will provide insight into the local business scene and tell you about opportunities to connect with and support businesses and nonprofits in your local area.

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Liam Dempsey: Hey. I’m Liam Dempsey. I am here again with my good and trusty friend, Erik Gudmundson. Erik, how are you?

Erik Gudmundson: I am doing very well today, Liam. Thank you.

Liam Dempsey: Alright. 

Erik Gudmundson: How are you? Go ahead. 

Liam Dempsey: Yeah. I’m, I’m, I’m okay. A little frenetic today. I feel like maybe we should tell folks that you are sitting on the back of a power outage. And if you do not close out the show as you normally do when I open it, it’s because you’ve lost power and you’re no longer on the show.

Erik Gudmundson: We’re having fun. What can I say? It’s spring storm season right upon us here.

Liam Dempsey: Yes. Indeed. Indeed. Indeed. 

Folks, we are super excited to welcome Kate Etherington. Kate is the president and executive director of the Willistown Conservation Trust. Hello, and welcome, Kate.

Kate Etherington: Hello. Thanks for having me.

Erik Gudmundson: Kate, it’s a pleasure. Thank you very much for coming on the show.

Liam Dempsey: Kate, I wanna just jump right in here because, in advance of today, I have spent a lot of time, getting to know your organization and getting to know you a little bit. And I have to confess that I am absolutely flabbergasted by the breadth of what the Willistown Conservation Trust does to protect our local environment. 

When I first heard of you on the back of our conversation with John Jackson from the Stroud Water Research Center, I thought it was another local trust doing good, doing well, but holy cow. Folks, they do land protection, and bird conservation. They run a community farm. They’re involved with watershed protection. They have education and outreach programs, land stewardship, and habitat restoration. That is a lot. A real lot.

So, Kate, I’m gonna ask you to start with land protection. That’s the question. Can you give us an overview of what your trust’s land protection efforts are?

Kate Etherington: Sure. Thank you. So you mentioned the word land trust. At our core as an organization, we are a land trust and land trusts are, organizations that work in their communities to protect land. They steward habitat. They protect waterways. They provide equitable access to nature for community members and so that what has been our guiding, and core mission since our founding in 1996. 

We began as a group of, really friends and neighbors who were concerned about, development creep into, what at the time was really the countryside. So this group of friends and neighbors, banded together. They actually formed themselves under the umbrella of Brandywine Conservancy and worked to preserve land in and around, what is Willistown Township. 

Since then, we’ve expanded exponentially as you mentioned, but, land protection really is the core work that we do, and we use a tool called a conservation easement. That’s the primary tool that land trusts use to protect privately held land. It allows land to stay under private, home ownership, but it restricts future development rights. So that’s a tool that runs with the land and allows us to be able to do what we do, to protect the remaining open space in our region.

Erik Gudmundson: That’s a a very complex answer, and I’d like to unpack different pieces of that as we go because they’re all interesting and they’re all worth exploring. 

One of the things the trust runs is a community farm at Rushton Woods Preserve. Tell us about that farm called Rushton Farm.

Kate Etherington: Sure. So Rushton Farm is unique in that it is a working farm that is situated on a public nature preserve. So Rushton Woods Preserve is an 86-acre nature preserve and Rushton Farm was founded as a way to demonstrate that you can farm in harmony with nature. 

So, oftentimes farming is done at the expense of nature. It uses pesticides, it’s a lot of monoculture crops, and Russian farm is the exact opposite of that. If you were to go, you would see many varieties of fruits and vegetables being grown on the six acres. You would see birds and insects, flying around the farm fields. You would see hedgerow so that, you know, we’re not walling nature off from the farming experience, and we’re also not keeping people out of the farming experience.

So people are walking through the farm fields, they’re volunteering, they’re getting their hands dirty, they’re experiencing the soil and where food comes. So it’s really been an opportunity to create this wonderful sense of community, grounded in food, which is something we all need and enjoy.

Liam Dempsey: We talked a little bit about Stroudon Water Research Center, earlier already, and they’re the ones that mentioned your organization, and that’s how you came to our attention. And we know that you work with the Stroud Center on Watershed Protection. But how is the trust protecting the area waters? What do your programs look like there?

Kate Etherington: So back to our land protection efforts, the way that we have organized our area of greatest need for land protection was around the headwaters of the Ridley, Crum, and Darby Creek watersheds.

So those are three watersheds that are tributaries to the Delaware River, which is a huge source of drinking water for the region, recreation, habitat, and hugely important. And we are uniquely positioned in the headwaters of those streams. So the work that we do on the land can directly impact the quality of those waters as they flow to our downstream neighbors and into the Delaware River. 

So we have scientific programs that study water quality. So we have a monitoring program. We’re studying the impacts of essentially human activity on the waterways. And so that could look like, pesticide use on lawns. That could look like studying road salts and how they impact salinity in the water. 

So we have a monitoring protocol where we sample 10 sites monthly in that watershed. We analyze the data and we’ve published that data in what we call our state of our streams report.

And what we’ve been able to do with that data is to use it to then, inform best practices on land management. So we’ve used that in a variety of ways. One example would be with municipalities to do homeowner education or education on road salt usage. And then we’ve also been able to do that with stream site neighbors. We have a wonderful lawn to meadow conversion program and a riparian planting program.

So we’re working with landowners to have best management land practices that would impact water quality.

Erik Gudmundson: Let’s talk specifically about land protection, land stewardship, and habitat restoration. I don’t know if I’m okay to lump those all together, but tell me about some of the specifics you’re doing in those areas.

Kate Etherington: So, I sort of think about land protection as the first step in that process. So once we’re able to protect a piece of land, that’s wonderful in and of itself. But then when you can go the next step to actually restore the habitat, so that it’s beneficial to the wildlife that relies on that open space, and then steward it for generations to come.

So habitat restoration, might I just mention lawn-to-meadow conversion? That’s a really great example. It’s become increasingly popular. It’s a way to encourage, healthy habitat in your backyard and anybody can do it. We work to educate community members on native plantings, removing invasives, all of those things that provide food and shelter for birds and insects and other beneficial pollinators. So that’s really sort of that habitat restoration piece of it. 

And then the stewardship is you know caring for that land as I said for generations to come. One of the incredible things about land trusts is, you know, we are able to preserve this land in perpetuity and perpetuity means forever. Forever is a really long time. 

Erik Gudmundson: It is.

Kate Etherington: And so it’s incredible to, you know, sitting in my office window right now and I’m looking out at one of our latest land protection projects. And I can sit here and know that, you know, in a hundred years, somebody can be walking across that land and enjoying the same benefits and access to nature that I see now.

Erik Gudmundson: That was a wonderful answer. I like the way you you explained how each of them worked and how they work together because I think your county, without them working in harmony together, it’s probably a little bit of an incomplete part of that wheel. So, thank you. 

As a follow-up, though, how do you compare to some of the other organizations that do similar things and maybe they do a subset of those things? Do you work together with organizations like, say, Natural Lands Trust or French and Pickering and, or do you work together? How how do you compete? How do you fit together?

Kate Etherington: Yeah. So, it’s a very collaborative community. Typically, land trusts, tend to be regionally based. You know, we’re working on land projects, and so land is place-based. Since I’ve entered the space of working in land trusts and becoming more familiar, I’ve started to notice, you know, when I travel places, I see a land trust. They’re all over. You probably, you know, if you’re not familiar, you might not realize that, but land trusts are working in almost every community from very rural communities to very urban communities. 

And so we’re all working towards a very similar mission. Where it’s Chester County, I think, is unique in that it has some incredible land trusts doing, wonderful work. We work very collaboratively. You know, we are in meetings together. We’re problem solving together. When we have complex projects, sometimes there’s partnerships that arise out of that or best practice sharing. So, while it seems like we might be competing for the same resources, I would say, you know, I think most land trusts recognize where they’re working and where they’re not working and how we can best work together.

Erik Gudmundson: So it sounds like it’s a good thing that there are so many organizations like yours here in Chester County.

Kate Etherington: Absolutely. Yes.

Liam Dempsey: I wanna turn our attention to bird conservation. And I’m really glad that I got to ask this question because, we feed birds out on the back deck and have a water, bath for them, and it’s a lot of fun to see the the birds in the backyard there. So, we know that you run programs to monitor the populations, particularly of migrating birds. And as I learned that process is called banding where you capture and well, temporarily capture and put little bracelets for want of a better visual. 

But, as I understand it over the course of the program that you’ve been running, and I want to hear you tell me about it and its interesting that the trust has banded something like 15,000 different birds, and you’ve managed to then recapture about 3,200 of them and therefore being able to update their biological history and research and the like. 

So, I want you to tell me about that, and I also want you to tell me about how the public can get involved with that because I know that is open to the public in some way.

Kate Etherington: Sure. So birds are an incredible tool for conservation. First of all, they’re an indicator species. So if you think back to the analogy of the the canary in the coal mine, you know, birds are telling us information. They’re telling us about priorities for habitat restoration. They’re telling us, you know, by studying migration, we’re understanding where they’re going, where they need to go. 

And they’re also an incredible tool for inspiring a love of nature and conservation and people. And so, you know, most of us are familiar with birds, right? They’re in our everyday lives. We see them, but when you can actually go and see a bird, hold it in your hand, release it, there’s just something sort of magical that happens in people. And, I think it really develops this deep, deep connection with the world around us.

So a little to get a little bit more technical about the banding process. So Russian Woods Preserve is as I mentioned an 86-acre nature preserve. It’s one of the largest remaining intact forest networks in Chester County. 

So, the Banning Station is sort of uniquely situated in a protected land that happens to be a really robust woodland and forest. So we’re able to monitor those birds that travel through there in the spring and fall migration and then we monitor birds who are breeding there in the summer. And then in the fall, we monitor saw northern saw-whet owls, which are just about the cutest little owl you’ve ever seen. 

And we are, it’s a really unique process. It involves birds flying through these things called mist nets. They are gently extracted from the nets. As you mentioned, little bracelets are put around their ankle. We’re studying things like, you know, their body mass and their age to understand what kind of bird they are, the species, the number of species that are traveling through, and you know how much food they’ve been able to consume along the way. 

And that tells us a lot of information. The public is invited to come. So it’s, I think a unique opportunity for the general public to see scientific work up close and personal. We have a banding station. It is not enclosed, so you can walk right up to the scientists. You can ask questions. You can talk to them. Sometimes you can even hold a bird and release it. So it’s really pretty incredible. We do post a schedule of when that banding happens on our website under our bounce events calendar so you can register for that and sign up. Spring banding begins in April and fall banding begins in August, or early September.

Liam Dempsey: I have a quick question about the migratory practices of birds. Mostly, the folks, the birds that get banded, in the trust’s grounds. Is there any chance that they’re gonna come by my house and my deck in a subsequent year? Should I be keeping an eye out for little bracelet-wearing birds, or are they really they always go to the same fields or the same acreage when they come north or south? Do you happen to know?

Kate Etherington: You know, we as you mentioned, we do have what we call recaptures. So we know that birds return to Rushton Woods. We assume they return there because, you know, it’s a wonderful habitat. I suspect they go elsewhere. That’s probably not their only stop in this area. You certainly can look for bracelets. They’re pretty tiny. 

You know, we have had instances, I would say if you find, unfortunately, if you find a dead bird, that has a bracelet, you should call us and we can find out, you know, where that bird comes from. We can report it. And that’s an important piece of information in this data collection effort.

Erik Gudmundson: Speaking of data collection, there is usually at least one question about technology on the show with William working in web marketing and digital marketing, me working in technology and cybersecurity, we were intrigued by your Modus Wildlife Tracking System. Please tell us about that.

Kate Etherington: So motus is another form of bird banding, but it takes a higher tech approach to that. So if you think about bird banding and the bracelet situation, it requires that recapture process to really understand where a bird travels to and from. That’s hard to do. It does happen, but it’s not giving us information in real time. We can say, you know, bird went from point a to point b. We don’t know much about what happened in between. 

What Motus does is it actually puts instead of a bracelet, almost like a little backpack on the bird, which sounds very silly, but it literally looks like a little tiny backpack with a little tiny antenna, weighs about point three grams so it doesn’t impact how the bird travels. They shouldn’t feel it. And it is picked up by Motus stations that we have helped to install all over the Northeast. 

So we have worked as part of the Northeast MODIS collaboration to install over a hundred towers. And those towers are anywhere from, you know, the top of a mountain to the top of a building. 

And we’ve essentially tried to set up, almost a fence system that will pick up these birds as they fly on their migratory path from the North to the South and back again. And that allows us to have many more detections and understand where they’re traveling, essentially in real-time.

Liam Dempsey: And that information is available on websites in real-time, isn’t it?

Kate Etherington: It is. So there’s a website called motus.org. We link to it on our website as well. And the unique thing about that data is it’s open source. So it, you know, although we have invested and put effort into building this huge network of towers, any researcher worldwide can use that information. So it’s not, you know, proprietary. We’re not saying, you know, we did this work and only we can use it for our benefit, but it’s really meant to be, benefiting bird populations and the understanding of their travels around the world. I’ll also note it’s we don’t do this, but it is used for bats. It’s used for butterflies, for dragonflies. So it’s a pretty dynamic tool.

Liam Dempsey: That’s so cool. And we’ll be sure to link to that Motus site over on our show notes page on local. 

Kate, you’ve we’ve read in the website, and you talked about a number of times today that the trust is involved with and supports a variety of research. And I feel like we could probably run the whole show on just that, but maybe you could spend just a few minutes giving us a few highlights of some of the research projects really to give us a sense of what kind of research happens there and who’s doing that research.

Kate Etherington: I mentioned the water quality monitoring. So that has been an effort that is now seven years in the making. And research takes a long time to build up a body of information. So, you know, it’s not dependent on one year of data, but data over time that tells us trends in studying the impacts of human health on our waterways, and that has allowed us to make recommendations on best management practices.

So, it’s one thing to do research and then the next step is to share it with relevant users of that research to make changes in their behavior. So that’s allowed us to advise municipalities on road salt usage. It’s allowed us to talk to landowners about pesticide use and fertilizer use in their lawn. It’s, I think, really inspired, sort of this care of stream site neighborhood among our constituents.

With our bird research, two projects I’d like to highlight are our grassland bird collaboration. We’ve been working in Southern Chester County to study the impact of mowing on the successful breeding of grassland birds. So those are bobolinks and Chester meadowlarks, two species that are in serious decline, with many people either mowing their lawns and in the case of Southern Chester County, often those fields are mowed for hay. 

We have studied the timing of breeding and can help then inform farmers and landowners on delayed mowing practices so that birds have the best chance of survival. So, you know, when a baby bird is born in a grassland and it gets mowed before they’re able to fledge the nest, you can imagine what might happen. Our goal is to prevent that from happening and to help those birds successfully fledge the nest.

And lastly, a research project on Chester Towies. So Eastern Towies are birds that rely on what we call shrub scrub habitat. So, if you think about, your yard and sort of that edge of the woodland where there’s that scrubby, shrubby layer, most people want to get rid of that. It’s not very attractive. You know, they like lawns, they like trees. But that in between layer that might be like pricker bushes and all that, is actually really structurally important for birds. 

And so we studied Chester Towies, which rely on that shrub scrub habitat for nesting purposes and for protection from predation. And again, use that data to inform landowners. We’ve developed a guide. We call it beauty in the Brambles, with the tagline of Life is messy, embrace the mess, and really thinking about that not only with your lawn but with that shrub scrub habitat that is so often removed.

Erik Gudmundson: In August of 2023, we spoke with Andrea Yount of the Chester County Food Bank about food insecurity in our local area. 

And in September 2024 at the Food Bank’s County Food Forum, Andy made it clear that the problem is getting worse. How does the Rushton Farm help address that issue?

Kate Etherington: Rushton Farm is a wonderful example of how a local, small regenerative farm can benefit not only the environment but talso he people who visit the farm and benefit from the food there. It’s become a model of that regenerative agriculture movement. I think it demonstrates that you can successfully farm without eradicating nature. You can have food that is grown almost literally in your backyard or down the road from you. You’re not going to the grocery store and getting, you know, a tomato that was grown in California and shipped across the country. But you’re able to have this fresh, wonderful food source that’s right in your yard. I think it also connects people in a deeper way to the food that they’re consuming. It, you know, helps.

You can literally go there and dig your hands in the soil. You can pick a tomato, and eat it right off the vine. And I think there’s something sort of transformative about that process of really understanding where your food comes from. In a world where we are increasingly disconnected from our food systems, this is a way for people to connect directly with nature, see how food is grown, and access it in their own backyard.

Liam Dempsey: And am I correct in understanding that through the farm, a certain percentage of what you grow is donated then to the let me get this right, the Chester County Food Bank and the Westchester Food Cupboard? Is that correct?

Kate Etherington: So we donate directly to the Westchester Food Cupboard, which is part of the food bank system.

Liam Dempsey: Got it.

Kate Etherington: We’ve had a long-standing partnership with them where we deliver weekly. We have a dedicated garden that grows food specifically for the food bank and that garden is run by volunteers. 

And then we also donate, excess food from our CSA that is either not picked up or extras that were grown. And that food is, provided to the county, and it’s, you know, a wonderful opportunity to, again, provide that sort of fresh local food. You know, canned and boxed foods are wonderful components of the food bank’s food system. But to be able to have that fresh produce, I think is a wonderful benefit to many families.

Liam Dempsey: We read with sadness of the recent passing of one of your colleagues, Fred DeLong. Our condolences on to him and his family and to you and your colleagues. Tell us about his work. We understand that Rushton Farm was, he was pivotal to the success of Rushton Farm.

Kate Etherington: Thank you for your condolences. It’s been a heavy few weeks here, at the Trust. He was a beloved member of our organization, but also of the greater community. If you were to visit Rushton Farm, you know, you would see farmer Fred wandering around the farm fields, chatting with kids and adults alike. He had lots of stories to tell, but Rushton Farm was really his vision. He worked at many local farms. He was a long-time employee at Pete’s Produce in West Town. He often talked about his days there and brought a model to the Trust that, again, highlighted the idea that you can farm in concert with nature. You can have, and grow a lot of food on a small amount of land. You can care for the soil. You can grow food and bring the community together. So it was really that sense of community that he developed at Rushton, that continues to live on.

Erik Gudmundson: The Trust runs some educational programs for both young people and old people. We appreciate that you’re not a field trip destination, but you do have programs for both age groups. How can the public learn what the trust has to offer?

Kate Etherington: You can learn about the trust educational programs at our website [wctrust.org]. We have an events calendar there that lists all of our upcoming programs. I’ll highlight just a few things, for the audience here. Our Russian nature keepers program is our youth education program. It’s designed for children ages 8 to 11. It’s open to anybody. It has a small sort of mini-camp component and then it runs for the remainder of the year into the fall. 

And our goal with that is to really have kids come back and participate in the whole series of programming. It covers all of our program areas. It’s immersive in the field of educational experiences. So you’re out, you know, planting potatoes, you’re walking in the streams, you’re banding birds. It’s pretty incredible.

We have an adult education series as well called EcoCentric and that’s very similar to Russian Nature Keepers. We are getting adults out in the creeks. They’re banding birds. They’re visiting the greenhouse on the farm. So that’s a wonderful opportunity for adults to learn about what we’re doing and experience those things in the field. 

And then we have lots of other programs for folks to get involved. We try to have a range of free and low-cost programming so that it’s accessible to anybody in the community. We have nature walks. We have culinary programs. So there’s really no shortage of opportunities to get involved with what we do.

Liam Dempsey: The trust owns 334 acres across five locations. Yet, I read on your website that you, the Trust, actively is are protecting more than 7,500 acres in the Willistown countryside. I’m guessing this is where you’re gonna tell us about easement but walk us through how you got to that 7,500 when you only own 334.

Kate Etherington: Yes. Conservation easements are the key to that number. That number also includes lands that have been protected by other organizations in this region. So, I mentioned, we originally started as Brandywine Conservancy. So many of those acres are continuing to be stewarded by Brandywine. There’s a few nature preserves that are owned by the township as well as natural lands. So it’s really a connected landscape of protected lands being monitored and stewarded by several different entities. 

And what’s unique about that, if you think about the scale of that, that’s larger significantly larger than Valley Forge National Park. And while it’s not all parkland, it is this mass of protected landscapes. And when they’re all connected together like that, it creates this greenway, which enhances public access and habitat for wildlife.

Erik Gudmundson: 7,500 acres certainly surprised me. And the other thing that really surprised me was the fact that you have about 30 employees. Given the expansive work happening on your lands and with all your programs, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you have 30 people or at least maybe I should be surprised that you only have 30 people. But tell us about who works there. What sorts of backgrounds and education does your team have?

Kate Etherington: We have a mix of employees that, many of which come with us come to us with environmental science backgrounds, Biology, Ecology, Horticulture, Ornithology. But we have many folks like myself that don’t have that scientific background.

So, the organization the way that we’re able to do all that we can do is by having departments that work in those areas with experts in those fields. And we have an incredible team of support staff who help with fundraising, who help with event planning, who help with our education, who help in our office. Myself, I have a background in nonprofit leadership and psychology, so, you know, it sort of runs the gamut. But I would say that most of our staff who work out in the field doing the scientific work have some sort of environmental Science background.

Liam Dempsey: Kate, with the breadth of the programs and the diverse focus of your work around land restoration and protection and all the things we talked about, I expect that your funding model is gonna include a number of different sources. Can you walk us through how the trust funds its work and its team up to 30?

Kate Etherington: Yes. So you’re right. We have a sort of a puzzle of fundraising pieces that when put together make a whole. First and foremost, we have relied on the generosity of private donors who not only live in Willistown but live around us, live in Philadelphia, live in Wilmington, and far beyond. 

So, private philanthropy certainly fuels much of our activity. And we have donors who give at all local, and it’s just wonderful that we have this broad community support of individuals and families who wanna support that work. 

In addition to our sort of regular annual fundraising, we do some special fundraising events. And these are wonderful opportunities to get involved. We have barns and barbecues in the spring, and that is a barn tour. So you could get to tour local barns, and then you end with a fundraising dinner and auction. 

And then in the fall we have something called Runamuck, which is a 5k]s run and it ends with a band and a bonfire and a barbecue and that’s just an incredible family-friendly event. We’ve been growing every year. I think last year we had over six hundred people attend so I encourage people to come out and participate.

We do rely on grant funding. So grants from both private foundations as well as government sources. We’ve been the grateful recipient of funds from the US Fish and Wildlife Service, from the Pennsylvania Game Commission, from PADCNR, Chester County has been a wonderful supporter, Willistown Township so, definitely broad, broad grant support. Yeah, that covers most of it.

Erik Gudmundson: The Trust’s tagline is Save, Study, and Share land, water, and habitat. 

You told us before that you make sharing the trust work and findings with the local community a key priority. Why is that sharing so important?

Kate Etherington: The sharing component is so important because people really have to be part of the solution. If we are going to protect the environment, protect the Earth that we benefit from, to be able to see open space in the future and thriving habitats with wildlife. That’s gonna take people in order to do that. 

And when we share the work that we do, whether it’s somebody coming to bird banding or going on a nature walk, they get to experience that nature and develop that deeper connection with it, which we then hope inspires action on their own part. You know, we hope you go home and you think about planting one native plant in your yard and watch the bees and butterflies come to flock to that. And that really small action is going to hopefully inspire change, inspire the next generation of caretakers. And it’s just a wonderful opportunity that we have to not only do the work but include people in how we’re doing it.

Liam Dempsey: You have a program promoting bird-friendly coffee. I’ll say that again. Bird-friendly coffee. We understand that the Griffin Coffee Cup company in Westchester, which is a fantastic place. I just went there for the first time, maybe a couple of months ago. I really liked it. They’re a partner in that program. So can you tell us what is bird-friendly coffee and why is it so important for the Trust?

Kate Etherington: So when we think about people, how do we inspire people to make a difference? And, you know, sometimes these problems feel so big, and it’s really hard to wrap your head around. Like, you know, in the last 50 years, we’ve lost 3,000,000,000 birds, mostly due to habitat loss. How can you even wrap your head around that?

So, coffee is something that most of us drink every day, and it’s one small action that you can take to help save birds. And the way that you can do that is that most coffee was traditionally grown in the shade. So it was grown in the rainforest but in shade. Rainforests are an important habitat for birds. Birds that come here in the summer are down in the rainforest in the winter. I think it was in the 1970s, a strain of coffee was developed that could be cultivated in the sun. And so that led to mass deforestation of the rainforest, which led to habitat loss for birds. 

So, coffee that is grown in the sun, is not promoting bird-friendly habitat. So by buying coffee that is certified shade-grown, there’s a bird-friendly designation and that’s through the Smithsonian. It’s a fairly rigorous process. Just by changing your morning brew, you can have one small impact on a bigger conservation problem.

Erik Gudmundson: You mentioned earlier about the more advanced environmental degrees that some of your staff and colleagues there have, but your own credentials are nothing to sneeze at. You are one of the first graduates of the University of Pennsylvania’s master’s program in nonprofit leadership. You also spent some time working at a domestic violence shelter. How did those experiences influence your leadership style at the trust?

Kate Etherington: I worked at the domestic violence shelter pretty much right after college. So, I was a young woman in my 20’s. It was my first real job out of college. I worked there for several years, and it was a pretty transformative experience. I got to work with people work with and on behalf of people from all different backgrounds. I learned a lot about myself and the world, and I think that helps develop skills of compassion and empathy, and listening, which are skills that, you know, are really transferable to any leadership position. 

And when I entered the nonprofit leadership program at Penn, I think I was maybe in the third class. It was a relatively new program at the time. It was really focused on honing in on the skills needed for nonprofit leadership as the name suggests. 

So that is everything from organizational dynamics to financial management, to fundraising, to program development. And again, you know, while I don’t have a background that’s specific to environmental science or conservation, I think those skills that I’ve gained along the way have helped pave the way for leadership here coupled with just a personal passion for helping the environment.

Erik Gudmundson: Well, here in Chester County, you’re definitely in an equestrian mecca. And speaking about Willistown specifically, your neighbors include Radnor County races, pony clubs, fox hunters, trail riders, and the list goes on. How do you work with those equestrians in your natural spaces? Because I imagine there’s sometimes it’s very easy to work with them and sometimes it’s hard to work with them because a bunch of horses going over a wild, you know, meadow is not necessarily what’s best for the meadow, but at the same time, they’re trying to preserve natural space as well just like you are. So, how do you work with your equestrian neighbors?

Kate Etherington: We’ve worked very collaboratively with those neighbors. So the the land that we own are public nature preserve. And so those have always been open for both pedestrians and equestrians to use. You’re right in that sometimes, habitat suffers as a result of that. But that also happens with people coming through. 

So part of it is education. You know, we’re fortunate that many of our equestrian neighbors are very respectful and, you know, if there’s a very rainy or muddy day, they might not go out, things like that. 

So, we’ve really tried to have a pretty open dialogue with all of the different equestrian users. Ratner County, you mentioned down the street. That’s a large piece of land that is under a conservation easement. So they’ve been, participating in the process of preserving open space. 

When we, complete private conservation easements, so that’s conservation easements on privately held land, we do work with landowners to try to place trail provisions in those conservation easements, particularly for the equestrian history that exists in this community. You know, many of the trails that are here have been historically used by equestrians for over a hundred years. And so our hope is to help preserve that network so that that activity can continue. But that takes a lot of effort to work, not only with the equestrians but the landowners who generously allow riders to cross their property.

Liam Dempsey: Kate, I’m gonna ask what’s becoming one of our trickier questions for some of our guests. Please share a local business or nonprofit that more folks should know about.

Kate Etherington: So I struggled thinking about this because there are so many good ones, and we’ve talked about a lot of them here on the call today. So, I’m gonna talk about two of my favorites, one of which is around food. And it might not be really much of a secret, but Malvern Buttery, is a local coffee shop, breakfast, lunch, in Malvern. And, they have partnered with us on some culinary events. They’ve done some in-kind donations to some of our other events. And our staff just frequents their business quite a bit. They’re just, you know, they’re focused on local food, which really aligns with our mission at Rushton. So they’re using local produce and meats and eggs and all the good things. So, that’s a wonderful spot if you haven’t been. 

And then on the nonprofit side, I’ll go back to the equestrian, question. Thorncroft is another organization in Malvern, PA. So it’s it’s local to us. They don’t have the same mission as we do to conserve land, but they have 70 acres of open space that they have utilized to really create an incredible and welcoming community through their therapeutic riding program. And we’ve partnered with them on a few events. They’ve, you know, supported us. We’ve supported them, and they just, every time I go there, I just smile with the community members that are there and the incredible horses. So, it’s a great place.

Erik Gudmundson: How can the local community support the Willistown Conservation Trust?

Kate Etherington: As I mentioned before, we have a lot of different events. So we are doing things almost every week. I really encourage you to look at our website, look at our events page, and come out to something. That’s actually how I got involved. I came to an event and spiraled and here I am today. So, they, you know, we, I think I’m biased, but I think we do a wonderful job of offering diverse, activities for both families and adults and and children. 

And there’s volunteer opportunities too. So we have volunteering at our farm. You can come out, you can help weed, you can plant, you can help in the garden that, works with the food bank. We have tree planting days. So if you like preserving habitat, protecting habitat, come plant some trees. And our stewardship team is always doing work in our nature preserves to do trail maintenance, clear invasives. So there’s opportunities if you’d like to come out and get your hands dirty. 

And then of course we always welcome donations. So, you know, if this work is important to you, and being a part of this community and seeing open space and protecting the environment, we’d love to hear from you.

Erik Gudmundson: Kate Etherington, President and Executive Director of Willistown Conservation Trust. Where can listeners connect with you and learn more about all the good work being done at the trust?

Kate Etherington: You can visit [wctrust.org]. On there, there’s also an opportunity to sign up. We have several different newsletters that go out, e-newsletters. They highlight our events. They provide education, and information. So please check us out.

Liam Dempsey: Kate, thanks so much for your time today. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. It’s been a pleasure getting to know you and hearing so much about what the Trust is up to. Thank you.

Kate Etherington: Me too. Thanks so much.

Erik Gudmundson: Thanks also to my cohost, Liam Dempsey. I’m Erik Gudmundson.

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