Hampton resident works toward protecting green space

A typical day on the job just doesn’t exist for Hampton resident Emilie Rzotkiewicz.

“Some mornings I wear a suit, asking for significant dollars, and in the afternoon I’m out walking in the mud,” she said. “Yesterday, I was digging out a tractor from the mud, trying to figure out how to get it done.”

With the weather having righted itself by the following day, she visited the Fern Hollow Conservation Area in Sewickley Heights: 33.6 acres of protected land under the auspices of Allegheny Land Trust, for which Rzotkiewicz serves as vice president of stewardship.

Along with working toward creating partnerships and garnering financial support for the Sewickley-based nonprofit, she supervises staff members who generally take care of issues such as, say, extricating machinery from the mire.

“But I enjoy that part of the job now, especially that it’s not just being behind a desk at all times,” Rzotkiewicz said.

She joined Allegheny Land Trust, which now protects more than 3,600 acres of green space, as stewardship coordinator in 2010. A native of Punxsutawney, she had been working for a national forestry organization in Washington, D.C.

“I wanted to kind of get out of the city and city life,” she said, “and my family still was in the Pittsburgh region.”

At the time, she constituted pretty much the entirety of Allegheny Land Trust’s stewardship department, overseeing land-management efforts on properties that the nonprofit had acquired, including Wingfield Pines in Upper St. Clair.

“And I just started developing volunteer days, tree-planting days, Earth Day events, things that would get people involved in and try to slowly transition some of our properties to have healthier environments and create better wildlife habitats,” she said.

“Through the years, we have been successful in acquiring more land, having more donors, having more people who are interested in getting out on the land. So we’ve been able to hire more stewardship staff. Our capacity has really grown, so now we can do much larger projects with bigger impact.”

Protection is the priority for Allegheny Land Trust, which is marking its 30th anniversary in 2022. The main goal is to ensure that not every inch of property is gobbled up by development, and that future generations can continue to enjoy strolling amid canopies of trees and leaves, hearing birds chirp and taking in the olfactory sensations created by nature.

“I help provide that green space where your son will go out and build a teepee with his friends, and play in the woods,” Rzotkiewicz said.

Toward that type of purpose, the land trust has made acquisitions in 32 municipalities in Allegheny and Washington counties. Among them are Barking Slopes in Plum, Bethel Green in Bethel Park and the Walker-Ewing Log House in Collier.

“A lot of what I deal with is just making sure that the property is safe and welcoming. We look at it for access and parking, so with every property that we acquire now, my responsibility is when we get it to be like, OK, what is the management? What are we going to do with it?” Rzotkiewicz said.

“With some of them, we do nothing. And that’s our goal, just to keep it a wild green space. They’re unspoiled. We don’t put trails through them. There may be a trail through somebody’s backyard that goes down to the creek, but we’re not planning out trail systems. We’re not building parking lots.”

From a management aspect, Allegheny County has a specific plan for each of its properties.

“It clearly says, these are the problems that are there. These are the things that we should address. And we have done it for neighbors, other landowners, even municipalities where they have a green space but wonder, how can we make it better?” Rzotkiewicz said.

“We have expertise in forestry. We have expertise in wildflowers. We have expertise in trail building. So it really depends on what the landowner’s goals are, and that’s what we help them identify.”

Rzotkiewicz’s education provides a substantial background in that regard: She earned her bachelor’s degree in biology from Denison University and master’s in forest Resources from Penn State.

And she always is eager to help meet a growing demand for green space and all it has to offer.

“I think we’re in an era right now where everybody is understanding the mental benefits,” she said. “A lot of people understand, oh, it’s good for my health to go for a walk, but not just for the exercise.”

For more information about Allegheny Land Trust, visit alleghenylandtrust.org.