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Politics & Government

PHOTOS: Earth Day Festival 2013

A gallery of images from the day's festivities.

From bike rides, to reptiles, to water conservation, to conserving the town's natural beauty, Glendora had a little of everything to offer during the Earth Day Festival.

The primary focus of the festival is to bring a greater awareness of environmentally conscious products, methods to reduce consumption, ways to stay healthy, clean the environment and be self sufficient.

The all-day event consumed much of the exterior of City Hall and the Glendora Library.

Officers from the Glendora Police Department taught youngsters about bicycle safety on the road during the early-morning bicycle rodeo. The children were led by officer Russell Zino on a one mile fun ride, which started from a parking lot behind the Plaza, went around Finkbiner Park, travelled south along Vista Bonita and ended at the festival.

Lotus of Light, a Glendora business specializing in acupuncture, wellness and holistic products, displayed a hydroponic tower garden, which boasts a healthier way for people to eat.

"You grow all your fruits and vegetables dirt free, no bugs, no weeding. We're going to start a farm in Glendora. We'll start off with 15 towers and go from there," said Karen Duffy, Lotus of Light representative.

Countless winged and venomous insects and furry rodents invaded the festival all day … but were safely contained in glass cases. The Trails Committee proudly displayed examples of the wide variety of creatures that inhabit the natural landscape of Glendora, the collection courtesy of Dick Swinney, from the Glendora Trails Committee. He has collected tens of thousands of insects alone from the Glendora area since his youth.

The Glendora foothills is also home to the endangered Brodiaea filifolia is defiantly unique to Southern California. The Glendora Community Conservancy purchased land north of Glendora in order to protect this endangered species.

"In natural settings, you have a good balance of everything. When you get a lot of unnatural things, too many introduced species,  or non-native plants that come in and take over, it disrupts that balance and becomes more of an unhealthy ecosystem," said Kelly Middleton of the Glendora Community Conservancy. "There's not much left. We have a couple of natural patches left in our foothills that we're trying desperately to protect."

"There are a lot of species that, because of urbanization, when they grade the hills down for fire protection,  you lose some of those unique species that can only live within a specific range," Middleton said.

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