Fairmount Park

Investigators are awaiting the results of an autopsy planned for today to see what more they can learn about a badly burned body found Sunday evening in Fairmount Park. A pedestrian found the remains off Greenland Drive about 6 p.m. and flagged down a passing police car. The body was so badly burned, police said they could not determine the race, sex or age of the person. Contact the Inquirer Online News Desk or online@phillynews.com or 215-854-2443.

A plan to streamline oversight of the city's 9,200-acre Fairmount Park system finally appears ready to take root and then bloom. Mayor Nutter and City Council prepared the ground by adding $2.4 million to the budget of the perennially underfunded park system, with a further pledge to boost spending by nearly 50 percent over the next five years. The city's largest park friends' group, the Philadelphia Parks Alliance, calls that investment historic - and that's no exaggeration.

A 32-year-old man was robbed and stabbed Saturday morning near his home in the city's Fairmount Park section, just blocks from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, authorities said. The victim, who was not identified by police, was walking in the 2700 block of Pennsylvania Avenue about 4:35 a.m. when a man came up behind him and pressed an object into his back, saying it was a gun. The robber forced the victim into woods behind a nearby playground where they struggled. The victim was repeatedly slashed with a knife, police said.

Police are looking for a man who attacked a 17-year-old girl in Fairmount Park this morning and yanked down her pants before she could fight him off and flee. The attack occurred about 8:35 a.m. on Valley Green Road in the northern part of the park in Roxborough, police said. The teen did not suffer serious physical injuries, police said. Police, who searched the park after the assault, have not yet provided a useful description of the assailant. Contact the Inquirer Online News Desk at online@phillynews.com or 215-854-2443.

It has worked well in other city parks, and some environmentalists say the benefits are likely to outweigh the costs. Nevertheless, the idea of a network of zip lines, ropes, and cables allowing visitors to explore the Fairmount Park treetops has fired up opponents, who are organizing to stop the city from considering it. Worried that it will damage vegetation, disrupt wildlife, and spoil the tranquillity of an urban oasis, residents formed the...

Many of us growing up in the Strawberry Mansion section of Philadelphia in the late '40s and early '50s played rough games in the street by day while hanging out aimlessly on the corner at night. Yet somehow there emerged among us a forest ranger whose working life was spent in the wilds of Norway and Montana, another who lives in a houseboat on the Chesapeake, a science teacher and naturalist, a landscape artist and a nature photographer. The crucial influence directing these lives along such unexpected paths was not family, class or culture but, of all things, leafy Fairmount Park.

Philadelphia Police have identified a man found shot to death this morning in Fairmount Park. Montague White, 26, of N. 38th Street in the city's Mantua section, was discovered unresponsive around 6 a.m. on the 4000 block of Cedar Grove Drive in West Fairmount Park, according to a Philadelphia Police spokeswoman. White had been wounded twice in the chest and once in the hip. Police believe the shooting occurred following an argument with an unknown assailant. Contact Kevin Smith at smithk@philly.com .

A man was killed and three girls were wounded in a shooting about 10 p.m. Sunday at a party in Fairmount Park near 33d and Diamond Streets, police said. They said the man, in his 20s, was hit six times, including once in the forehead. He was taken to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The girls, ages 6, 10 and 15, were in stable condition. Police said the 15-year-old was taken to St. Christopher Hospital for Children with a bullet wound to the leg. The younger two, both with facial injuries, were taken to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

FAIRMOUNT PARK is the nation's largest park system, with 9,200 acres. In 2008 it had a budget of $15 million, but by 2010 it was down to $11 million - which barely meets the park's most basic maintenance needs. And its budget situation just keeps getting worse. We need to think out of the box about how to fund the system into the future. The Fairmount Park Commission and other civic leaders have been looking for ways to generate more funding through other means, such as improved concessions.