Monroeville conservation project among Allegheny Land Trust’s 30th-anniversary efforts
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Allegheny Land Trust is marking its 30th anniversary by continuing to increase the amount of regional area dedicated to remaining green.
The Sewickley-based nonprofit’s efforts include the Gateway Woods Conservation Project, which seeks to conserve 124 acres of forested land in Monroeville on a permanent basis.
“It will connect with Monroeville’s parks, and then Pitcairn’s Sugar Camp Park and our Mosside Slopes, creating 425 acres in total,” Lindsay Dill, land trust senior director of marketing and community engagement, said. “So it’s this amazing project that has the potential to create more close-to-home, connected green space for hiking, biking and birding.”
Mosside Slopes, located between Monroeville Park East and Route 48, is a 14-acre conservation easement. While the land trust doesn’t have full ownership, surface development is restricted to ensure that it remains green space, as a habitat for wildflowers and other flora and fauna.
Gateway Woods is under contract, and the land trust is working on raising $1.34 million for its purchase by the end of the year. Secured as of March 24 were $521,000 through a state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources grant and $15,000 awarded by the Garden Club of Allegheny County.
Another DCNR grant is pending, as is money from the Department of Community and Economic Development and the Redevelopment Authority of Allegheny County. The land trust also is seeking funds from foundations and corporations, along with the municipality of Monroeville and the local community, according to Dill.
“We’ve seen nothing but supportive kind of energy over there,” she said.
‘Now it’s accessible’
Five or so miles northwest of Monroeville is another major Allegheny Land Trust conservation area: the 148-acre Churchill Valley Greenway, the site of the former Churchill Valley Country Club.
“My favorite thing about this project is that it was formerly this private space, exclusive by nature, and now it’s accessible dawn to dusk to anybody, every walk of life,” Dill said. And within a three-mile radius, there are 100,000 people. So it gives an incredible amount of close-to-home green space access to neighbors.”
Located in the municipalities of Churchill and Penn Hills, the greenway is split by Route 130, off which plenty of convenient parking is available for visitors. Several dozen arrived on the morning of April 14, Dill among them, with the purpose of planting trees on some of the erstwhile golf greens.
“This green space development is by far one of the most positive things that’s happened in the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh,” Ken Balkey, a member of the Churchill Borough Tree Committee, said.
The group started on an ad-hoc basis in 2018 and was formed by ordinance the following year.
“We’re losing our trees at a very rapid rate,” Balkey said. “So we’re trying to protect what we have, and with events like today, we’re trying to get more trees back.”
He was joined by other borough residents — including Mayor Paul Gamrat and his wife, Pattie, a Churchill Garden Club member — plus nearly 90 students from Woodland Hills High School and Turtle Creek Elementary STEAM Academy.
‘I planted that tree’
Among them were students in the high school’s Climate Action Team, for which science teacher Margeaux Everhart has served as sponsor since its formation five years ago.
“Our Climate Action kids actually were the first ones here this morning to be trained, and they’ve done quite a few plantings now. So they also led the charge working with students who haven’t planted trees before,” she said. “It’s given them that leadership opportunity and allowed them to reach out.”
Coordinating the Churchill Valley planting effort was One Tree Per Child Pittsburgh, a program of the nonprofit Tree Pittsburgh that partners with an initiative started in Australia by environmentalist Jon Dee and the late entertainer Olivia Newton-John.
The greenway was the recipient of 150 trees, Pittsburgh program manager Clara Kitongo said.
“Since 2020, we’ve been getting some good funding, specifically from the Allegheny County Clean Air Fund,” she said. “We’re able to get about $10,000 to be able to implement tree-planting projects in four school districts, and Woodland Hills was one of those.”
Having the opportunity may have an impact on the students well into the future, according to Everhart.
“These younger kids who are from elementary school can walk through here one day and say, ‘I planted that tree in fourth of fifth grade.’”
For more information about the Allegheny Land Trust, visit alleghenylandtrust.org.