(upbeat music) (air whooshes) - Next on "You Oughta Know."

Get ready to channel your inner DIY skills at this creative craft studio.

Plus, this nature preserve in Bucks County is educating us on the importance of native plants.

And the legacy of preservation, rehabilitation, and education continues at Cedar Run Wildlife Refuge.

(upbeat music) (air whooshes) Welcome to "You Oughta Know."

I'm Shirley Min, and I'm so glad you're here.

Wildlife rehabilitation is a growing field.

Rehabilitators take in injured animals, fix them up, and then release them back into the wild.

Well, there is a large wildlife rehabilitation hospital in Medford, New Jersey that treats thousands of animals every year.

(uplifting music) Nestled in the New Jersey Pinelands, you'll find Woodford Cedar Run Wildlife Refuge.

(uplifting music) - Cedar Run is a nonprofit wildlife refuge that's home to a wildlife rehabilitation hospital and 171 preserved acres.

- [Shirley] The Wildlife Rehabilitation Hospital is where thousands of native animals are given a second chance at life.

Lori Swanson is the Director of Wildlife Rehabilitation at Cedar Run.

- Our wildlife rehabilitation hospital takes in just under 6,300 wild animals every year.

We only work with native wildlife to New Jersey.

(gentle music) We take a wide variety of species size-wise, age-wise.

We get in babies and adults, that come in either injured or orphaned, that need care.

- [Shirley] Orphaned babies like these bunnies come in often through the summer months.

- Because there are so many people around and so many cars, they're getting hit by a car more often.

Or they don't have good places to nest, and so they will nest in people's attics, or in their sheds in their backyard, or under their deck.

And so humans are just coming into contact with wildlife more and more.

So I think they really deserve our intervention for those reasons.

We're causing a lot of the injuries or the orphanings that we're seeing.

- I think there's a pretty common misconception that a place like Cedar Run is stepping in where nature didn't work.

But the overwhelming majority of the reasons we're taking in animals is human-caused issues.

So our hope is to offset some of those human-caused issues and give those animals a second chance.

- [Shirley] A mission that began in 1957 when Betty and Jim Woodford founded Cedar Run.

Around that time, someone brought an injured great horned owl to Betty, to see if she could help.

- Wildlife Rehabilitation will always be one of our core missions.

You know, that is Betty's legacy.

Certainly, we do get in animals that are in really bad ways.

They're experiencing a ton of trauma.

So we can see really traumatic injuries.

In those cases, where those animals are beyond debilitated, we will conduct humane euthanasia.

That's a necessary part of the job.

- [Shirley] Wildlife rehabilitators work hand in hand with veterinarians.

Rehabilitators like Lori are well versed in the native species of the area and their behaviors.

The vet can provide any necessary medical care.

And together, they're giving that injured animal its best chance at survival when released back into the wild, which is the goal.

Some animals that can't return to the wild can stay at Cedar Run, provided they're comfortable behaviorally in a captive setting.

(uplifting music) - [Crogin] Hi.

- [Shirley] This is Crogin.

Yes, the crow is saying hi.

- Hi.

- He imprinted on his human rescuer who brought him to Cedar Run, where he now stays.

- [Crogin] Hi.

- [Shirley] This is why Lori and her team cover the cases the animals are in, to prevent animals from getting too attached.

- These animals are not accustomed to being handled by people.

It's important for us, especially for the young animals, whether birds or mammals, to make sure that they are only seeing us when we're feeding them, providing medications, cleaning them, so that they don't imprint on us or habituate to us.

I feel really lucky to be able to play a small part in the lives of these animals.

These animals are not like cats and dogs.

They're not going to like me.

They, most of the time, want to bite me or scratch me.

So they're not thankful patients.

Still, no matter what, it is a wonderful feeling to be able to contribute to that cause.

(uplifting music) - The need for the services that we've provided, especially in wildlife rehabilitation, has grown over time.

We're really proud of what we've been able to do, especially in terms of environmental education, being able to reach more folks on and offsite of Cedar Run.

Because it's our belief that the more people know about our natural world and the wildlife that call New Jersey home, the more they will appreciate and respect our native wildlife.

(uplifting music) - As Mike said, environmental education is a big part of Cedar Run's Mission.

And Educator Jim Hansen joins me now with a couple of animal friends.

Jim, thank you so much for being here with us.

- Absolutely.

Thanks for having us here, me and my friends that we got here.

- We have two animal ambassadors.

Introduce me to them.

- Yeah, absolutely.

So first we have our friend Winkin.

She is an eastern box turtle.

Give her a second.

She'll pop out of her shell here.

- Oh my gosh, she's so cute.

- So this is our friend little Winkin.

She is, like I said, an eastern box turtle native to much of the East Coast here in the United States.

She came to us back in 2011.

She was actually raised in captivity at a zoo up in New Jersey back in, like, the late '80s, early '90s.

- So she can't go be released back in the wild.

- She can't go out in the wild.

She doesn't really know what to do out there on her own.

She's always had her food given to her.

Her water.

As a reptile, they can't handle the cold so she's gotta be inside.

So she spends her time with us now educating people and letting them see some of our native wildlife that we have around here.

- She's super cute.

And who else do you have?

- So we also have our other friend.

This is Remy.

He is a black rat snake.

- (laughs) Not a huge fan of snakes.

- Not a fan of snakes.

Well, you know, that's also perfect, 'cause a lot of people do have a little fear or snake.

The whole part of it is, you know, they're not gonna really go after you.

They're usually pretty gentle.

As long as you don't mess with them, they're not gonna mess with you.

So little Remy, like I said, eastern, or, sorry, he's a black rat snake.

He will eventually grow up to about seven feet long.

Right now he's about three years old.

He was also born in captivity.

So again, being in captivity, he can't go out there in the wild.

He's always had his food hand delivered to him.

- Mm-hmm.

He's beautiful.

- So yeah.

- I imagine having the animals on hand helps kind of get the message out and keep kids' attentions, for sure.

- Definitely keeps their attention.

Definitely gets them engaged, You know, always getting to see an animal up close definitely can grab anybody's attention.

Really gets them to kind of care about it and get them focused on it a little bit more.

- Why is the environmental education piece such a big part of Cedar Run's Mission?

- It's really a great part of us to try to gather that youth, get that next generation starting to care and learn about the environment so as they grow older, they can share that message with their family, share that message with themselves, and hopefully kind of help spread that.

As, you know, the more people care about our environment, the more animals we can help protect and maybe not have to end up in a situation where they need to come into our wildlife hospital.

- Mm-hmm.

And who are you talking to?

And is it mostly children?

- It's a large majority kids.

Pre-K up till about eighth grade or so.

But we do also see a fair portion of high schoolers and adults.

We see some retirement communities and things like that.

But the definitely heavy portion of it is gonna be that elementary, middle school kind of age.

- Mm-hmm.

And is that by design?

- Design a little bit, and also just that's the ones that have the need for it.

That's kind of the age demographic that is most able or receptive to be able to gather this information and really get it started early.

So as they grow up, they continue that.

- Correct.

I love it because you're really kind of hitting that next generation, trying to cultivate that idea of stewardship and caring for the environment.

- Absolutely.

- What did I hear, that it's some 20,000 kids go through Cedar Run every year?

- Yep, on average, see about 20,000 kids.

A lot of them come into our refuge.

Field trips coming in there.

We see a little bit above 100 kids a day.

But we also go out to communities.

We go out to schools throughout the school year.

We have, like, summer camps come and see us as well.

- Winkin is moving like crazy.

- Yeah, she's a good girl.

She's feisty.

- I see how well Cedar Run is operating, you know, from having gone out there.

How is the organization funded?

- Majority of our funding is from private donations.

From, you know, every regular person coming in and visiting for the day dropping some donations in there.

Can also donate on our website.

- So no state or federal funding whatsoever?

- No state, no federal funding.

- That's incredible.

- It's all private donation.

We get a couple grants here and there, but the vast majority of it is gonna be that private donations from people just supporting the mission.

They see what they like and help support us and help us take care of the animals.

- Buck here, dollar there.

- Yep, it all adds up.

- And you have a big fundraiser coming up.

Tell me about that.

Wine & Wildlife.

- Yes, our Wine & Wildlife.

We always like our little alliteration there, going on there.

So July 13th we're gonna have our Wine & Wildlife fundraiser.

It's gonna be at the Moorestown Community House over in New Jersey there.

And we are gonna be helping people educate.

We're gonna have some of our animal friends.

These guys might make an appearance.

We also have some birds that might be showing up.

- Ooh.

- Little bit of our bigger friends there.

They're also gonna have like raffles and wine tasting.

Whole bunch of different stuff to get you out there and learning about us, help support.

And like I said, all just to help our mission, help support our animal friends, both ones that stay with us full time, and the ones that we help out and get back out there into the wild.

- I love it.

It's a good way to connect with Cedar Run's mission and also have a little fun at the same time.

I love it.

Jim Henson, educator with Cedar Run, thank you so much for visiting.

And Winkin, thank you so much for making an appearance.

Okay, well, we are gonna head now to Bucks County to visit Bowman's Hill Wildflower Preserve, which is home to 750 plant species, hear that, Winkin, that are native to Pennsylvania.

(soothing music) - This here is one of probably my most favorite native plants to share with people.

This plant is called spicebush.

It has yellow flowers.

Those early flowers mean that it provides a great resource for native insects that are just waking up from winter and need that, you know, transition food into the later spring.

In addition, it is a great scratch-and-sniff plant.

So it's really fun to show folks because we can engage all the senses when we talk about native plants.

- We are a place of protection, a sanctuary, for approximately 750 different Pennsylvania-native plant species.

Pennsylvania as a state has about 2,000 different native plant species, and we house about 750 of those through our network of trails.

The mission of Bowman's Hill Wildflower Preserve is to increase the knowledge and use of native plants through being an educational resource and a destination that inspires conservation action.

- The flame azalea is perfect if you have kind of those rocky, acidic soils.

Also, it tolerates shade quite well.

But what folks really love this plant for is these brilliant orange blossoms.

And these brilliant orange blossoms help attract a particular pollinator to this plant which everyone loves, which is our ruby-throated hummingbird.

- [Peter] We grow between 33,000 and 35,000 native plants for sale and grant programs to distribute out into the community.

So we're taking the power of native plants, yes, we're protecting that here on this site, within our borders, but we're doing work to extend that out into the community as well.

- People most know poison ivy, obviously, for the reaction of the urushiol oils on the skin.

We see leaflets of three.

And I say leaflets, not leaves, because that collection is a single leaf.

Poison ivy is another one of our native plants.

It's used from everything from insects, that help pollinate it, all the way up through things like rabbits and birds.

Rabbits will use it as denning.

Birds will use the berries as a food resource.

It is a great, rich, wonderful, native plant species, just not for humans.

(upbeat music) So another one of our great native species that folks really only get to experience here at the preserve is this mapleleaf viburnum.

So it is a low-growing-ish shrub.

And the reason people don't encounter it so much is that it's kind of deer candy.

It's one of the first species that the deer will go to when they're looking for browse and/or food.

But here at the preserve, because of that deer fence, that deer exclusion fence that surrounds our property, you know, we are able to host wonderful plants like this.

Each of these collections is multiple flowers, so we call that as a composite.

It's made up of multiple flowers in one kind of floral head.

- [Peter] This is a place of respite to help us connect not only with ourselves, emotional, physical, spiritual wellbeing, but also to connect with nature.

So you can do that across many different habitats, many different museum exhibits.

We have floodplain exhibit, we have meadow exhibits, we have forest ecosystem exhibits.

So it really is something here for everybody.

(soothing music) - Looking for something creative to do with family or friends this summer?

Well, check out Board and Brush.

It's a DIY wood workshop with hundreds of projects to choose from.

And you don't have to be an artist to create something beautiful.

(upbeat music) - I took my hobby of woodworking.

I had a need to help people learn a craft and, you know, teach people how to make some personalized items and stuff like that out of wood.

- [Participant] Perfect.

- Perfect.

- We would just like to invite you to come and enjoy a workshop with us.

You go online, you can find all of the different projects available for each workshop.

And then a lot of projects offer personalizations.

Our main workshops are pick your project workshops.

We have porch signs.

We have pedestal trays and wall signs.

And a lot of people really like all the different design options for those.

And then we also have some of our smaller projects.

(upbeat music) - We have a lot of games in our gallery as well.

We have backyard tower, we have tic-tac-toe, we have yard dice, and everybody's favorite nowadays is cornhole.

Each project is stencil based, so you don't have to worry about free handing anything.

And what's nice, too, is everybody can do their own project.

Even if you have two people doing the same project at the table, I can almost guarantee those projects are not gonna come out identical.

'Cause everybody puts their personality into it.

Every workshop starts off with the stressing.

We'll take a meat tenderizer, we'll take some chicken wires, some nails, anything we can do to put an indentation into the wood, give the wood some character.

Then we can move on to our sanding.

We're gonna run over the edges of the wood, smooth that over a little bit.

And then you can pick your stain color.

We have seven colors of stain as an option.

(upbeat music) Once we get past that, you can do a paint technique.

Whether you wanna do a dry brush or a paint wash, there's different ways you can add color to your board before you do your stencil.

- You're going to be moving onto your stencil.

When I peel, I keep my hand real close to that edge.

- We'll walk you through peeling it, placing it, and then peeling off the clear tape, which holds all the little pieces together.

And then you get to pick your paint.

We have about 90 colors of paint here in the studio to pick from.

(upbeat music) Once you get done that, you peel your stencil, we let it dry, and you are ready to go.

- [Group] Peel, peel, peel, peel, peel, peel, peel, peel, peel, peel, peel, peel, peel, peel!

- [Participant] Yay!

(group cheers) - [Bill] We do a lot of different variations on porch signs, and it seemed to be our most popular.

Recently, though, our pedestal trays have been becoming more and more popular.

These are trays that have a foot on them that we attach at the workshop.

- [Liz] If somebody tells us they don't have any artistic ability, we usually just tell them to relax.

We help them through with all the steps.

And with having the stencil, they don't need to freehand anything.

They just use the outline of the stencil to help them create the design.

- We have, at any given time, anywhere from 700 to possibly 1,000 different designs available in our gallery.

All throughout are different project levels.

You can make what you want to make, and how you want to make it, through your own creativity.

We are a BYOB establishment here.

You can bring your own beer or wine, whatever it might be, to enjoy while you're doing your workshop.

- I enjoyed being with others and creating something for my home, just losing myself in the activity.

- Very nice to have something that you've made yourself and created, and you come away with feeling proud of yourself.

- [Liz] The goal is for our customers to come in and have a great experience.

Have fun being creative, make something for themselves, and when they go home, they have a beautiful project.

- [Peter] It's more about the memory than anything else.

- A Philadelphia street photographer is using South Street as his backdrop.

He's on a mission to change how the hippest street in town is viewed.

(upbeat music) - I've taken over 60,000 portraits on South Street.

And I feel like I've seen it all, but every day there's something new.

(camera clicks) After traveling around for almost 10 years doing photography in various places, whether it was out in the West Coast, in California or Colorado, I even lived overseas in Morocco for a while, I came back to my home city here in Philly, like, three years ago.

And I basically was just looking for a spot to really focus on with the photography project.

And this was it.

I don't think there's a more eclectic, diverse, fun place than South Street.

And say, "Cheese!"

(camera clicks) (upbeat music) I grew up in the far Northeast, like Northeast Philadelphia.

My mother's Moroccan and my father's Iraqi.

They met here in college.

They both went to Temple University.

My mom, while she was a college student at Temple, she worked as a host at South Street Souvlaki.

And actually, my father also at one point had an electronic store on South Street.

But growing up, I came down here a lot with my father especially.

We'd go for walks at Penn's Landing here.

And my mom's brother, so my uncle, Saeed, he was on South Street so much that they nicknamed South Street "South Saeed."

So there's definitely roots my family has had here, and they were immigrants in this country.

And to make them happy and proud of me, it means a lot.

(upbeat music) My parents eventually moved back to Morocco.

And my maternal grandparents, they taught me, like, the Moroccan dialect of Arabic and were a second set of parents to me.

So I was really fortunate to have that.

I figured if I'm gonna do street photography, I should just really focus on one place and kind of, like, embed myself in the community and become a part of it.

It only took me, like, four or five months of living in the neighborhood where I was like, "All right, I wanna do this full time," and didn't look back.

One of the things I really pride myself on as a photographer is the diversity of the subjects that I have in my portraits.

Being able to connect with people from all different walks of life, all different backgrounds, I think it speaks to all the traveling I've done.

You have to really have a keen sense for empathy, be relatable, know how to approach people the right way.

And it's sort of a collage of human life, the diversity of human experience, just right here on South Street.

It's a draw for a lot of people from the Philadelphia area, the surrounding area, and even elsewhere in the world.

There's tourists coming here from Canada and Australia.

And you'd be surprised the people I run into on a daily basis.

(upbeat music) I might take anywhere from like 300 to 400 pictures a day on a busy day.

The hard work, the discipline, the consistency.

It takes a lot of effort, and I'm definitely proud of it.

I think I'm trying to do the best I can to spread joy and positivity and good vibes here on South Street, and correct some misconceptions that maybe some people had about our neighborhood and about Philadelphia in general.

When there's all these wholesome, beautiful moments going on on South Street every day, it's awesome around here.

It's safe, it's fun.

It's a good time.

I do feel like this is my life's work.

I mean, I've been doing photography since I was 10 years old.

So after 19 years of having a camera in my hand, the fact that I can give back to my home city and to a neighborhood that's really dear to me, it means the world to me, for sure.

This comes from my heart.

There's a level of passion I put into this that is priceless.

- The dreams of an immigrant mother is what fueled the creator of our next story.

The Philadelphia Young Pianists' Academy is a highly sought after organization that's supporting the aspirations of gifted concert pianists.

(gentle music) - Music first came into my life because my mom loved classical music so much.

And at her time back in Taiwan, she couldn't really learn piano because it was only reserved for the wealthy people.

And so she learned typewriting instead.

Can you imagine?

So she loved it so much, and she just thought, "Well, I have two daughters, and I want my daughter to be proper and elegant and beautiful and just to learn to play the piano."

And she would never, in the wildest dreams, her daughter would one day become a concert pianist.

(uplifting music) Back in Taipei where I was born, we went to the Yamaha School with a group of kids just learning to play the instrument.

But then, very soon, they realized that, well, she's very talented.

So that's when I started taking private lessons and then eventually auditioned to be in the special music school when I was in second grade.

I soon realized that I loved performing.

It was just the excitement of going on the stage performing for people.

And then I realized I had the ambition to become a concert pianist.

And that I decided when I was 10 years old.

The only school that we were familiar with back then was the Julliard School.

So they said, "Okay, let's try pre-college over Julliard."

We arrived at JFK, and I had not applied for Julliard yet.

So we actually carry all our luggages, arrived at Julliard, went to the office, and applied right there.

And then three weeks later was the audition.

I played the audition as well as I could and got in.

And that's how I started my life in America.

And I was 14 years old at the time.

My sister was 16.

My mom came here for one month, and then she went back to Taiwan.

So leaving the two of us here in America by ourselves.

It was a very exciting time.

Could be a bit lonely traveling, you know, every single week from Philadelphia, where I was based, to New York every Saturday to attend Julliard.

But it was the most wonderful time.

(uplifting gentle music) Hi, Alex.

How are you?

- Hello.

Nice to meet you.

I'm good.

- And how's everything going?

- [Alex] Great.

- Great.

What are you playing for me today?

Success as a concept pianist is that you don't lose your passion and spark of what you started out with as a child, which is music.

Because the everyday life, the difficulty of the things that you encounter, it cannot affect how much you love music.

One thing that you know is the most amazing about being a musician: If you keep going, it gets better and better and better.

It always evolves.

(dramatic music) I founded PYPA, which stands for Philadelphia Young Pianists' Academy, in 2013.

When I was growing up, I did not know the way.

I had no direction.

Everything was by trial and error.

I wanted to create a community of people that love the excellence of music.

Only the most talented kids come and learn every single summer.

The 12th edition of PYPA is going to take place July 27th to August 4th, and we have 20 young pianists coming from all around the world to study with 11 faculty members.

And during that time, they take master classes and learn from each of the faculty.

We have over 100 hours of master classes, 11 concerts, 2 rounds of competition.

And audience members sometimes come back for five or six concerts within that nine days.

So it's a very exciting time.

(dramatic music) (audience applauds) Besides the summer festival, we started a seasonal soiree series to invite our festival participants in the past to return to Philadelphia to perform.

(audience chattering) Our next performer is Letao Li.

Let's welcome her.

Hi, Letao.

What is the program you're going to be playing for us today?

- Bach Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1, Number 15 and Mendelsohn Concerto Number 1.

(uplifting music) - These concerts happen every single month.

Sometimes we would have six or seven young artists traveling from China, from Berlin, from across the United States just to be here to perform.

(dramatic music) (audience applauds) What does it really mean to be successful?

It's not playing with the biggest orchestra in the world.

It really is that you find something always new to say.

You have artistic voice.

If one day it becomes, "I'm just doing it as a job.

I'm just going to my next concert."

I think I should stop.

So that's what I think it means to be a "successful" pianist.

(uplifting music) (upbeat music) - Here's how you can learn more about PYPA and its 12th piano festival, which takes place from July 27th through August 4th.

All right, that is our show.

Thanks so much for tuning in, and I hope you are now in the know.

Good night, everyone.

(upbeat music)