Wildlife

"I've been walking the Wissahickon for 50 years but last summer, Sioux showed me two trails I'd never been on before," said Elizabeth, a silver- haired woman in her 70s. She's one of a half dozen of us gathered at the Houston playground in Roxborough on a clear, crisp spring evening. We're getting ready to take a walk in the woods along Wissahickon Creek with Sioux (yes, that's her real name) Baldwin, naturalist at the Andorra Natural Area. The nature walk is one of the many outdoor activities on Andorra's wildlife calendar.

The Cedars at Medford, Medford Twp., Burlington County Careful! Duck crossing! You can't miss it - it's clearly marked with a sign. And while you've got your foot on the brake, look out for Giuseppe. That's Giuseppe the guinea hen, who found his way onto Marie Antonelli's patio in the Cedars at Medford rental complex years ago and continues, along with a host of other wild critters, to visit Antonelli and her neighbors. "I have a wildlife community here . . . and it's nice and woodsy; it's quiet, and there are no steps into my apartment," said Antonelli, 50, a resident at the Cedars at Medford for 18 years with her husband, Peter.

Libby Moyer never thought of herself as much of an environmentalist or spokeswoman for wildlife. She just considered herself lucky to live in a stately old plantation home nestled in one of central Montgomery County's few contiguous, undeveloped wetland forests. But earlier this year, when Moyer and partner James Garnett were looking for their lost dog, neighbors told them that a developer, Select Properties, was eying an adjacent property for a 21-home development. Moyer and Garnett concluded the project would upset the ecology of the 100 acres of woodland and evict the peregrine falcons, barred owls and other animals there.

The dredging of Crystal Lake, part of an estimated $200,000 rehabilitation project, will begin next month, said borough officials, who are trying to assure residents that neither wildlife nor property values will be harmed by the work. The project consists of three phases: dropping the water level and dredging the lake, which will start in February; building a silt basin and possibly fixing the retaining walls, and correcting a flooding problem downstream. At the same time, the township wants to develop an athletic field on a lot adjacent to the lake.

Turtles have a new place to sun themselves at the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum: the blue plastic sheeting over a temporary dam. Butterflies have a new place to flit: a 50-foot-wide corridor cut through a wooded area in the Tinicum Marsh. Six months after tens of thousands of gallons of oil leaked from a ruptured underground Sunoco Inc. pipeline at the urban refuge, the wildlife is making do. Although refuge manager Dick Nugent termed the tiny niche of marsh "irrevocably changed," he also noted that "nature acclimates and adapts.

How many agencies does it take to manage an ecosystem? Thirty-one states do it with one; 18 more have two. Only Pennsylvania requires three: one to handle fish, another for wildlife, and a third to oversee natural resources such as parks and forests. That inefficient-sounding exception is, in large part, what is behind a series of hearings to determine whether the Pennsylvania Game Commission and the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission - both strapped for cash and heading into tighter times - could be run more cheaply as one. On Thursday, the House Game and Fisheries Committee will hold a hearing in Philadelphia for the first time in at least a quarter-century.

A 140-acre tract of former farmland near the Rancocas Creek's convergence with the Delaware River will be open for public use as a park by the end of the year, Burlington County officials said yesterday. The area, in Delanco Township, will be known as Pennington Park. It will offer more than three miles of trails along with playgrounds, restrooms and wildlife observation shelters. Visitors will be able to watch white-tailed deer, wild turkeys, waterfowl and other wildlife along the park's 3,200 feet of waterfront.

The island in the center of Newton Lake is the size of a small office, about 10 feet by 13 feet, but it is also the center of a debate about the lake's future. The cattails shooting up 30 feet above it make for an ugly, swampy backdrop, some residents say. But to environmentalists, some of whom live in the area, the plants provide a natural habitat for black-crowned night herons, kingfishers, great blue herons, egrets and red-winged blackbirds. At a meeting tonight, both groups will have an opportunity to voice their concerns to the Camden County Parks Department, which owns and plans to dredge Newtown Lake in Haddon Township.

Paul Jaffe is an odd sight as he strolls through the African rain forest, gazing for primates in trees while carrying a waterproofed computer attached to a six-foot flagpole. With his staff, Jaffe looks like a modern Moses. Two professors from Arcadia University in Montgomery County hope his electronic gizmo contributes to the preservation of endangered species. Jaffe is developing a device that will allow guides in the field on Bioko Island to record sophisticated wildlife data into a palm computer.

Maureen Moore is determined to bring back the birds and the squirrels. If she is lucky, she says, maybe the deer will come, too. Moore, an art teacher at Cole Manor Elementary School, watched as wildlife were driven away from a wooded area next door when a residential development moved in. "Students in the library got excited when they saw deer running in the field. But they no longer come," she said last week, looking at the concrete structures that have replaced the trees. So Moore, who also chairs Cole Manor's Earth Day committee, has proposed establishing a strip of woods in the school compound to attract birds and other wildlife to the spot.