If you walk the trails at Pollack Brook Preserve this week, you might encounter evidence of the hard work of our stewardship volunteers who have been removing invasive plants. One of those volunteers is Andrea Southworth, an active member of the stewardship team since moving to Cape Elizabeth five years ago.
“I first learned about CELT when we were trying to move to Maine from Maryland. Our property abuts a CELT easement — which is awesome! Our neighbors encouraged us to attend the Harvest Party that year at Turkey Hill Farm, and we’ve been involved ever since!”
Over the years, Andrea has been a very active member of the conservation community across the Northeast. While living in the DC area, she developed environmental curricula with the Discovery Creek Children’s Museum and their partners. In New York City, she created programs with New York Restoration Project that focused on exploration and stewardship of the natural world, but also addressed issues of access to nature, food insecurity, and environmental justice. In Maryland, Andrea co-led an after-school program for at-risk elementary school students that focused on empowering students to grow plants, tend gardens, and more.
Today, Andrea lives here in Cape with her husband Jay Weiss and children Virginia and Vollie, and teaches at SMCC and at MECA. She also serves as the Ecology Project Manager for Friends of Fort Williams Park, leading their work to restore native landscapes and habitats, and has partnered with a number of other non-profits in Maine.
What Andrea most appreciates about working with CELT is its strength in the community.
“We lived in Maryland for eleven years, but we didn’t find the type of community connections like those here. Cape Elizabeth is a special place: the natural landscape, the beauty, the people, and the dedication to the environment and environmental conservation. For me, volunteering at CELT and working at Fort Williams is sustaining. I enjoy connecting people to each other and to place, and there’s no other place I’d rather be.”
Thank you, Andrea, for being a leader in our stewardship community, as well as the greater conservation community in Maine!
