Hispanic Heritage Month starts today and Pease Park Conservancy is honored to have cultivated a team with such rich and diverse backgrounds!
Representation matters and thanks to these incredible individuals, we have been able to broaden our community offerings and how we serve Spanish speakers through bilingual communications, programming, and our Ecologist School Field Trips. Join us in celebrating the value and leadership they bring to the organization and its mission by getting to know them!
As Latino Conservation Week comes to an end, we want to reflect on the many different ways in which Latinos are playing a role in conservation. From organizing events for groups to spend time in nature like Latino Outdoors’ initiative does, to working in land management, parks departments, and leading research across various topics concerning conservation - the work doesn’t end here! We hope you’ll stay connected with this initiative led by the Hispanic Access Foundation!
Thank you for your feedback and concerns regarding the splash pad at Pease Park.
At this time, public safety remains our top priority. We cannot reopen the water feature until we are absolutely certain it is safe to do so. The sophisticated controller equipment that continuously monitors water quality, dispenses the chemicals, and automatically shuts off the splash pad when water quality is out of balance must be operating properly to ensure that it is safe for play. Unhealthy water quality can cause illness and death.We want to assure you that we are working diligently to diagnose the problem and make the necessary repairs. We are working with GPSI, the firm that designed and built the splash pad, as well as IPS, the manufacturer of the controller equipment.
For the past 10 years, the week of July 15 through July 23rd has been recognized as Latino Conservation Week - An initiative led by the Hispanic Access Foundation to further amplify the presence of Latinos in the outdoors. During this time organizations and community groups across the country have gathered and participated in various events to promote conservation efforts in their local environments.
In honor of Latino Conservation Week, we spoke to Josie (San Antonio Regional Coordinator) and Bianca (Program Coordinator) of Latino Outdoors about the history of Latino Outdoors, the work that they do and why it’s important to build an inclusive outdoors:
One of February’s long celebrated moments of remembrance. Since 1976 we have made it an American practice to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.” — Pease Park Conservancy is working to center narratives, prioritize experiences, and most importantly to restructuralize how public land is cultivated and shared.
It’s here! For over a year, Pease Park Conservancy has been working hard to develop an Interpretive Plan for the park. We worked with PARD, as well as specialists from MuseWork and RECLAIM: Our Stories, Our Voice, and now we are bringing our work to you. Check out our introduction to the Pease Park Interpretive Plan video series, this will be a four part series that explores what an interpretive plan in, and the three themes that were determined for Pease Park.
And just like that, we are debuting our final installment of How Tuesday! This week, Chuck Smith, Chief Operating Officer of Pease Park Conservancy, showcases one of his many skills — baking bread!
We’ve all been seeing it everywhere, the pandemic has made bakers out of all of us whether we are culinary experts of not and it has been FUN! Chuck takes us through his special recipe for baking bread and makes it easy for you to do yourself.
Tune in and enjoy — this is a savory one for sure!
We have made some major progress since our last update! We have completed the demolition stage of construction and we are still on schedule for a Spring 2021 opening. Now we are moving on to some of the foundation elements, along with some other structural components. Follow along as we share updates and photos on the blog!
Check out the first installment of How Tuesday! Pease Park Conservancy staff is creating How To videos about activities that are keeping us busy right now. Watch as Marianne heads out to Pease Park and shows us how to easily identify plants and animals using the iNaturalist app.
Pease Park could use your help. Since we’ve been social distancing, we haven’t been able to host our annual Spring volunteer events in the park. We’re asking our volunteers to help us out and help curb some of the Ragweed and litter that has found itself in Pease Park while also maintaining a safe distance away from each other.
Earth Day is coming up on Wednesday, April 22nd and Pease Park Conservancy has partnered with BookPeople to bring you a list of some of the best Earth Day Reads for kids. We will be reading a couple of the books live on Facebook at 10:30am on Earth Day, be sure to join us there!
Join us April 24-27 while we take part in the City Nature Challenge, which is a four day challenge that is now taking place individually where we get as many people in Austin to participate in spotting and uploading different species that they find in their area, whether that is their backyard, neighborhood park or Pease Park.
There is nothing quite like a pandemic to make us all more aware of our personal sustainability practices, at least in regard to using up supplies that we are counting on tiding us over for a few weeks. If you’re interested in taking this a little further, you may want to check out EcoRise.
We have been notified by the City of Austin that the capital improvement project at Kingsbury Commons will continue during the shelter-in-place order. As a public works project, our work at Kingsbury Commons falls under the critical infrastructure category for the City of Austin. We are working closely with our general contractor and the City to ensure that proper protocols and procedures required to promote safety and wellness are being observed at the construction site during the COVID-19 outbreak.
As you likely heard, the City of Austin plans to announce a shelter-in-place order later today (March 24th). Under this order, parks will remain open to the public for exercise and dog walking. If this changes we will alert our Pease Park community immediately.
