Lancaster Conservancy

We are excited to announce the opening of a new hiking trail at Safe Harbor Nature Preserve! The trail takes visitors through a restored meadow and patch woodlands that provide critically important grassland and edge habitat for pollinators, birds, and other wildlife. 🦋🐝🐦🌱

Learn more about this restoration project and check out a trail map ➡ https://www.lancasterconservancy.org/news/meadow-restored-new-trail-opened-at-safe-harbor-nature-preserve/

📸: At Safe Harbor Nature Preserve by Avery Van Etten

This is not a healthy wetland, but soon it will be!

Lancaster Conservancy is beginning restoration work to improve a 17-acre floodplain, including a wetland, at Wizard Ranch Nature Preserve in Hellam Township, York County. The work will improve habitat as well as stormwater absorption and filtration.

⚠️ Wizard Ranch will be closed starting Monday, Aug. 24, in advance of this restoration work. We expect the preserve will reopen within 6-8 months.

Learn more about this restoration project ➡ https://www.lancasterconservancy.org/news/floodplain-restoration-at-wizard-ranch-nature-preserve/

📸: An impaired wetland at Wizard Ranch Nature Preserve centers around a stream with extremely steep, eroding banks. Restoration will reconnect this stream to its floodplain, improving the wetland habitat and its ability to filter pollutants out of stormwater while also reducing flooding downstream. (Photo by Keith Williams)

Join us for an evening of impact at the 17th annual Dine on Harvest Moon Dinner & Auction on October 2nd at the Lancaster County Convention Center! 🌕✨

We invite you to step into the trees and dine among the birds. Be transported to the treetops of our woodlands and the open skies of our meadows. Your night will come alive with the vibrant beauty of nature in a space transformed to honor the feathered friends that grace our forests and fields.

Protecting and restoring our natural lands is key to the Conservancy’s mission and to ensuring that our community and wildlife can thrive. The loss of birds has long been seen as a warning that something is not right in our natural world. But their return can offer an equally strong message — a message of resilience and hope. Join us for Dine on Harvest Moon and be part of this remarkable celebration to save nature!

Learn more and get tickets at: https://www.lancasterconservancy.org/harvestmoon/

- Illustration by Bailey Watro -

"Benthic macroinvertebrates" is a big name that basically means the tiny forms of life without backbones who live on the bottom of streams.

They are often thought of as river bugs because many kinds of benthic macroinvertebrates are the aquatic juvenile forms of insects, but the benthic macroinvertebrate group includes a wide variety of life: crayfish, leeches, freshwater clams, mussels, and snails all make up the community that lives on the bottoms of streams and is so ecologically important to our waterways’ health.

The species that compose this community tell us about water quality. When we find organisms we know are sensitive to poor water quality, we can be certain clean water flows most of the time in the stream where they are found.

Learn more about the critters that may call our local waterways home ➡ https://www.lancasterconservancy.org/news/river-bugs-and-other-underwater-critters/

Remember, when you're cooling off in your favorite stream, please be respectful of the wildlife that lives there. Don’t flip, throw, or rearrange rocks on the bottom of the waterway. While it may be fun to build rock dams, they completely alter stream flows and destroy habitat and can even kill aquatic bugs that may be living on the rocks.

📸: Michelle Johnsen

Tickets are live for Trail Fest 2026! Music, food, and community await as you explore one of the Conservancy’s newest nature preserves before it’s fully open to visitors!

Join us on October 17th at the beautiful Ingrid Graham Historic Hellam Nature Preserve in York County for:

🎶 Music by Cumberland Honey
🌳 A Nature Discovery Walk & Trailside Talks
🍻 Beer and cider from Collusion Tap Works
🍟 Food from Traveling J’s, Tipsy Boar BBQ, and Mezcla Ice Cream
🎨 Susquehanna River Art Collection curated by Rob Evans

Plus, check out the incredibly preserved and restored historic structures at Graham Nature Preserve that demonstrate the longstanding relationship between humans and our environment.

Get your Trail Fest tickets ➡ https://www.lancasterconservancy.org/trailfest/

📸: Michelle Johnsen

We want to hear from you! Take the Lancaster River Hills Conservation Area Public Input Survey and help shape the future of this treasured landscape!

➡ Take the survey: https://www.lancasterconservancy.org/lancaster-river-hills-conservation-area-master-plan/

The Lancaster River Hills Conservation Area is a remarkable landscape of sprawling woodlands, stream valleys, and scenic overlooks of the Susquehanna River. Within this area, the Conservancy stewards more than 1,800 acres of land, nine stream corridors, and portions of the Conestoga Trail.

As the Conservancy creates a Master Plan for this region, we want to hear from you! Please help us by taking the public input survey to share your experiences and thoughts. The survey should take 10-15 minutes and will be available through September 8, 2026.

📸: Kellys Run Nature Preserve by Michelle Johnsen

If you're looking for a cool hike for a warm summer day, we've got you! Here are some of our favorite nature preserves to explore in the summertime:

🌳 Fishing Creek Nature Preserve - Fishing Creek is great for getting your feet wet on hot days and is a classic riverlands stream: cool water that cuts through schist bedrock. Gravel bars and rocky spots support a great diversity and abundance of fish.

🌳 Kellys Run Nature Preserve - The blue blazed Kellys Run Loop Trail offers a challenging 3.8-mile hike that takes travelers through restored native grassland meadows and shaded rhododendron glens that line the Kellys Run gorge. Pools in the stream provide an opportunity to dip your feet in and cool off. (Note: this hike is strenuous.)

🌳 Welsh Mountain Nature Preserve - Mature oak and maple trees provide shade to help keep you cool as you hike the trails here. Check out the half-mile universal access trail or the approximately 2-mile Upland Loop Trail.

🌳 McCalls Ferry Nature Preserve - The Mason-Dixon Trail transports you to another world as you hike under a mature rhododendron canopy alongside Oakland Run. The stream combined with the deep shade of the rhododendron glen creates a cool microclimate.

➡ Find trail maps and driving directions for these and other Conservancy nature preserves at https://www.lancasterconservancy.org/preserves/

*Remember, the streams you are using to cool off are someone else’s home, like aquatic insects, salamanders, frogs, and fish. Please don’t flip, throw, or rearrange rocks on the bottom of the waterway. While it may be fun to build rock dams, they completely alter stream flows and destroy habitat and can even kill aquatic bugs that may be living on the rocks. Thank you for practicing Leave No Trace principles to help protect our natural lands!*

📸: Fishing Creek Nature Preserve by Rachel Haynes

Picture a hillside of bush honeysuckle. Yellow and white flowers in the spring, red berries in the summer and fall, a dense thicket of green leaves on plants that can seem more like small trees than bushes. The greenery of the honeysuckle blocks sunlight from reaching the forest floor, so nothing else grows there.

Bush honeysuckle is a group of invasive plant species that was introduced to North America from Europe and Asia. It outcompetes native plants, blocking sunlight and spreading easily.

In July 2024, Lancaster Conservancy stewardship staff and a group of volunteers who have dubbed themselves “the Misfits” began removing bush honeysuckle from Windolph Landing Nature Preserve, using loppers and Sawzall saws to chop away the tenacious invasives.

This past spring, the hillside once covered by invasive bush honeysuckle was instead carpeted with native Virginia bluebell wildflowers!

Working at the preserve this spring and spotting the thriving bluebells was “one of the most humbling days of our lives,” volunteer Kirk Piper said.

Check out the full story ➡️ https://www.lancasterconservancy.org/news/bush-honeysuckle-to-bluebells-restoration-at-windolph-landing/

📸: Virginia bluebells at Windolph Landing Nature Preserve by Eric Roper

Lush green woods and longer days beckon us to explore the outdoors in the summertime. 🌳 Meadows come alive with flowers and pollinators, streams offer places to dip feet in cool water, and shady forest trails offer breaks from the sun.

However, summer hiking comes with challenges like 🌡 heat, ☀ sunburn, and 🦟 bugs. Here are 10 ways you can help protect nature and yourself while enjoying time outdoors this season ➡ https://www.lancasterconservancy.org/news/summer-hiking-tips-to-care-for-nature-and-yourself/

Lancaster Conservancy’s efforts to provide Leave No Trace education to the community are made possible thanks to the generous support of the Lancaster County Solid Waste Management Authority

📸: Peggy Eppig

Restoration timelines are long. Take a meadow restoration, for example. 🌼🦋🐝

Summer visitors to Kellys Run Nature Preserve now find pollinator meadows teeming with flowers, insects, and other wildlife. The creation of this thriving habitat is the result of multiple years of work, from planning and finding funding, to preparing the planting site, to putting seeds in the ground, to the plants taking root and finally beginning to bloom.

Meadows provide a dynamic habitat which is crucial for birds and insects, serving as a source for cover and nesting habitat as well as a food.

Learn more about the meadow restoration at Kellys Run ➡️ https://www.lancasterconservancy.org/news/restoring-meadows-at-kellys-run-nature-preserve/

📸: Kellys Run meadow by Eric Roper