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VOF emphasizes community conservation in latest Forest CORE Fund RFP

The Virginia Outdoors Foundation (VOF) is now accepting proposals for the third round of grants for the Forest CORE Fund covering the Mountain Valley Pipeline region. The focus of the 2020 grant round will be on community-supported conservation in counties crossed by the Mountain Valley Pipeline, as well as independent cities within those counties.

In addition to protecting forested land, VOF hopes to encourage a wider audience to connect with forested lands and to ensure there are protected forested spaces available to the public.

With funding availability tied directly to the amount of clearing and grubbing completed along the pipeline’s route, the amount of funds made available in 2020 will be less than in the past two years. The total amount available is $1,000,000, and funding per project is capped at $200,000.

Proposals should demonstrate strong community support with full public access for enjoyment and connection with a forested environment.

Program materials, including an application, guidelines, and a map showing the area of eligibility, may be found online at  http://www.virginiaoutdoorsfoundation.org/terra/fcf-mvp/.

The deadline for applications is November 20, 2020.

Changes to the program adopted by the VOF Board of Trustees in June 2020 are designed to increase the emphasis on community conservation. The program has been modified to target projects within impacted localities that have great importance to the community and show a high level of community support. Projects will be scored on these qualities, as well as their accessibility by the public and their educational components.

VOF will host a webinar for interested applicants on September 3, 2020 to discuss the project selection process in detail and answer questions from potential applicants. Additional information, including registration instructions, will be provided closer to the scheduled event.

Prior to the webinar, VOF will assemble small virtual meetings with partners within the area of eligibility, gathering together local government staff, representatives from planning districts, land trusts, trails groups, and other non-profit conservation partners to develop and discuss project proposals. Please contact program manager Emily White directly if you are interested in joining one of these regional meetings.

VOF continues to seek and welcome input from stakeholders as it refines the Forest CORE Fund programs for future grant rounds. Anyone interested in providing feedback should email Emily White at ewhite@vof.org.

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Banshee Reeks Nature Preserve, Loudoun County

Banshee Reeks Nature Preserve, Loudoun County
Banshee Reeks is a nature preserve with plenty on tap for people to enjoy.

Jordan Luck must have known there was something magical about his property when, sometime in the 1830s, he gave it the name “Banshee Reeks.” Or maybe the stories are true, and the name was what he shouted when, drunk, he imagined he’d heard a spirit (in Gaelic, “banshee”) screaming in the mists (“reeks”).

Either way, the magic is still there. Protected by a VOF easement since 1984, Banshee Reeks was dedicated as a nature preserve in 1999 and named a Virginia Treasure in 2016. The 695-acre preserve is the only nature preserve owned by Loudoun County. 

Ron Circé has managed the property for the county since 2000. “When I first got here, there were about 300 acres of forest and the rest was hay field,” he says. “It would have been very easy to let all of it revert back to forest, but our goal has always been to aim for the highest biodiversity possible.”

The 400 acres of grassland/savanna fields at the preserve provide habitat for several endangered bird species. They require extensive management to keep from reverting to forest.

In consultation with experts on habitat restoration at state and federal agencies, Circé worked on transforming the hay fields into grassland and savannah. The result is a mixture of diverse habitats throughout the property, including, in the forested portion, an occurrence of the Mountain/Piedmont Basic Seepage Swamp, a rare ecological community designated by DCR’s Natural Heritage Program.

With support from the US Geological Survey, the Banshee Reeks Bee Inventory has been conducted once every five years since 2010, and has so far found over 125 bee species on the preserve.

The different types of habitat host a variety of plants and animals, including more than 125 native bee species. The diversity of bees is an indicator of ecosystem health and means a more resilient natural community. The preserve’s management style has been such a success that the Fairfax County Parks Authority has begun to adopt some of the preserve’s practices for its own grassland restoration program.

From passive recreation to education and research, there are plenty of ways for people to enjoy the magic of the preserve. More than 20 miles of hiking trails were mapped onto on old farm roads in order to disturb as little of the preserve’s intact forest as possible. The trails are 6 feet wide, perfect for social distancing in the COVID-19 era.

“We’ve kept it open for hiking only” since the health crisis began, says Circé. “There’s been a tremendous response. Just counting cars, there were 1,400 over the month of April; in May there were over 1,800.”

The 20 miles of trails on the preserve were mapped from old farm roads.

While the preserve’s visitor center was closed, preserve staff left out nature bingo cards so that kids and parents could turn a hike into a fun homeschooling project.

Now that the visitor center has reopened, Circé says the preserve’s educational programs will continue as soon as possible. The preserve hosts a Virginia Master Naturalist cohort every year and has won national awards for its senior citizen programming. Seniors, Circé says, are an underserved community in outdoor recreation and education.

“In 2018, we started hosting day hikes and archaeological day camps for seniors. For the day hikes we arranged for a state forester to greet them on the trail, so that he could spontaneously tell them a little about what they were seeing.”

Visitors can also help out in the 11,000-square-foot garden on the property, planted with vegetables and pollinator-friendly wildflowers. All the produce gets harvested once a week and goes to Loudoun Hunger Relief. Circé says they donated more than 1,000 pounds of vegetables last year, and 121 pounds so far this year.

“We had great plans for the garden this year,” he adds. “We were planning to teach container gardening for seniors; we had held only two classes when COVID hit.” The preserve plans on resuming classes as soon as COVID-19 restrictions are lifted.

Goats are the preserve’s secret weapon for managing invasives like autumn olive.

People can also volunteer to help with maintenance, such as painting and repairing fences, every third Saturday of the month starting in July.

Explore the magic of Banshee Reeks Tuesday–Thursday and Saturday–Sunday from 8am– 8pm. The preserve is located at 21085 The Woods Rd, Leesburg, VA 20175. For more information about programs and volunteer opportunities, visit the preserve website and follow the Friends of Banshee Reeks Facebook page.

VOF allocates $750,000 for public open-space projects in 8 counties

VOF allocates $750,000 for public open-space projects in 8 counties
A VOF grant will add land to the Corum homestead area at Bull Run Mountains Natural Area Preserve.

The Virginia Outdoors Foundation has allocated $750,000 from its Open-Space Lands Preservation Trust Fund (PTF) for nine conservation projects that will increase public access to open space for communities in Albemarle, Fauquier, Halifax, Middlesex, Orange, Prince William, Pulaski, and Rockbridge counties.

The projects were approved by the VOF Board of Trustees at its June 25th meeting. Additional project details can be found here.

 

Project Summaries

 

Project name: Ragged Mountain Connector

Locality: Albemarle County

Grant amount: $65,000

Description: The City of Charlottesville is seeking to acquire land that would complete a connection and trail access improvement  between the city, the 142-acre Heyward Community Forest, and  the 975-acre Ragged Mountain Natural Area. The project is also supported by a Community Forest Grant from the U.S. Forest Service. Ragged Mountain Natural Area is a drinking-water and recreational resource for the city.

 

Project name: Bull Run Mountains, Corum Tract

Locality: Prince William & Fauquier counties

Grant amount: $100,000

Description: Bounded by the Bull Run Mountains Natural Area Preserve on the south and the west, the Corum tract is a long-standing priority acquisition parcel for the Virginia Outdoors Foundation. The tract includes an historic African American homestead that is closely related to other cultural resources within the preserve boundaries.

 

Project name: Banister River Canoe Launch

Locality: Halifax County

Grant amount: $50,000

Description: The Town of Halifax wishes to purchase 16 acres in Meadeville for a potential canoe/kayak launch on the Banister River as part of the Southern Virginia Wild Blueway effort—a joint tourism marketing initiative of Halifax and Mecklenburg counties promoting the region’s waterways.

 

Project name: Urbanna Oyster Festival Site

Locality: Middlesex County

Grant amount: $140,000

Description: The Urbanna Oyster Festival has been held in the Town of Urbanna annually for 63 years and is the largest-income generating event for many nonprofits in the Middle Peninsula region. A large portion of the festival has been held on private land thanks to an agreement with the family who owns it. The land’s future availability is now in question. The grant would allow the Town of Urbanna and the Urbanna Oyster Festival Foundation to acquire the parcel to secure its use for future festivals and make the space available to the public year-round.

 

Project name: Gordonsville Park Connector

Locality: Orange County

Grant amount: $100,000

Description: A partner project with the Piedmont Environmental Council with significant matching funds, this project would fund the purchase of two parcels to be donated to the Town of Gordonsville, connecting Verling Park and the Fireman’s Fairgrounds. The connection of the two public open spaces is part of a larger plan to improve the existing parks.

 

Project name: Calfee Training School

Locality: Pulaski County

Grant amount: $80,000

Calfee Training School in Pulaski, built for African American students in the late 1800s.

Description: Established in the Town of Pulaski in the late 1800s to educate African American children, the Calfee Training School is the centerpiece of a potential future African American historic district. The grant will be used to plan and conduct renovation of the historic school into a community and cultural center. It will also address the need for a daycare facility and programs in the area.

 

Project name: T.G. Howard Community Center

Locality: Pulaski County

Grant amount: $80,000

Description: The T.G. Howard Community Center in the Town of Pulaski is the only African American community center of its kind in the New River Valley. Built in 1965, the center was the focal point for African American recreation, political events, education, and job training for more than 30 years. The grant will be used to restore the community center and surrounding land. Once restored, the site will be utilized to support school programs, health awareness, veteran awareness, cultural awareness, and recreational activities.

 

Project name: House Mountain Addition

Locality: Rockbridge County

Grant amount: $85,000

Description: The funds will be used by the Virginia Outdoors Foundation to acquire land adjacent to House Mountain Reserve near Lexington. This property is located just below Little House Mountain’s ridgeline trail and fills a gap between the reserve and an existing VOF easement. The land will become part of the reserve and protect the trail’s viewshed.

 

Project name: Pultz Property

Locality: Rockbridge County

Grant amount: $50,000

The Clark Family Cemetery on the Pultz property in Rockbridge.

Description: The grant supports an open-space easement on private land that is adjacent to George Washington National Forest and provides access from the Blue Ridge Parkway to an active historic cemetery with 300-plus marked graves, many of which are from Monacan tribe families.

Steve Tipsword, Rockbridge County

Steve Tipsword, Rockbridge County
When Steve Tipsword needs to thin or clear a tree stand on his property, he does it the old-fashioned way.

Moving logs requires horsepower, but some landowners prefer to use the kind that runs on oats.

Horses pose minimal disturbance to the forest floor.

That’s Steve Tipsword’s strategy for his 72 acres in Rockbridge County. “I settled on horse logging from the start,” he says. “I tried it as an experiment on a property I owned in Gordonsville. What struck me was that the season after you finish, you can walk through the forest and see the forest floor intact, with healthy trees all around and new seedlings growing.”

The age-old practice of using draft horses to haul logs out of dense forest stands has gotten renewed interest in the 21st century, as many landowners seek to manage smaller forested properties for their aesthetic and wildlife benefits.

Tipsword has employed horse logging on two different areas of his property: one stand that needed thinning for wildlife management, and another area that he had clear-cut in order to build a house.

“I was lucky enough to find a guy in Eagle Rock who has two Percherons he had raised from colts,” he says. “He would go in one day and cut down 15 trees and limb them up, and then it would take another day for the horses to haul the logs away.”

Before he had the area thinned, Tipsword says that the forest canopy was so thick that nothing was growing underneath. This meant there was nothing for wildlife to forage. “The trees were really mature, so there were no new seedlings underneath, no deer, no turkeys. After the thinning, with new stuff coming up, they all came back.”

100 days after being thinned, the forest floor is regenerating.

Tipsword protected the property with a Virginia Outdoors Foundation easement in 2013. “I had done some studying and liked the idea,” he says. “I had put it together from 3 different parcels, and I didn’t like thinking of it going to someone else and them making 23 pieces out of it. The tax credits were icing on the cake.”

The no-division easement protects water quality in Broad Creek by requiring a 35-foot buffer along the bank that borders the property. It also protects the view from the nearby Buffalo Creek/Purgatory Mountain Special Project Area with a restricted building setback that extends farther out from the creek.

There was still a large portion of the property where he could build a house, but in choosing the site, Tipsword was careful to connect with the natural processes of the forest. “I had 14 or 15 acres with extremely mature poplars. They were getting too old to selectively take out.” He clear-cut that area for his house, again using horses to do the hauling.

Tipsword does rely on one motorized tool to maintain his land: He uses a bush hog and tractor to control invasives along water and forest edges on the property. “It’s an ongoing battle,” he states. “Autumn olive pops up on just about any cleared edge. But if I can bush hog it, it shatters. The roots are destroyed and it won’t come back.”

He says he’ll use horses again when it’s time to thin other forested areas on the property, for their light impact on the land and the benefits to water and soil quality. Less land disturbance means less run-off to Broad Creek, which ultimately drains into the James River.

“If you treat the land well,” he says, “everybody wins.”

Rose Dale Park, Alleghany County

Rose Dale Park, Alleghany County
The meadow that once made up part of the Rose Dale estate is the newest addition to Alleghany Parks and Recreation's parks portfolio.

Ever since 1898, when A.A. McAllister sold a portion of his family property, Rose Dale, to the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company, Covington has been a company town. Early on, the paper mill provided both jobs and recreational amenities, such as playing fields and a country club, on its campus. As the mill expanded, however, those amenities disappeared. Other portions of Rose Dale were sold for housing. By the 1940s, the only green space left was a 14-acre meadow along Dunlap Creek where it empties into the Jackson River.

A view of Covington from the Rose Dale meadow circa 1914.

That meadow was an integral part of life for both the McAllister family and the community. A.A. McAllister operated a produce market there, and it was the site of neighborhood “victory gardens” during both World Wars. McAllister’s granddaughter, Lydia Mefford, remembers the jams and preserves her mother made from the grapes and peaches that grew there when she was a girl.

It’s a green oasis that Mefford has preserved, first by acquiring it from a cousin in 1991 and placing a conservation easement on it with VOF, then by donating the protected property in 2017 to Alleghany County Parks and Recreation. “I believe that by working with any and all interested organizations on all levels of concern, we can create a new ‘Garden of Eden,’” for the people of Covington to enjoy, she wrote to her cousin.

The park seen from the entrance road. The historic McAllister home, Rose Dale, now listed along with the neighborhood on the National Register of Historic Places, is visible on the left.

The parks department has focused on rehabilitating the property for public use, says its director, Chad Williams. “It’s come a long way since the county acquired it. Trash from illegal dumping has been removed. All the underbrush was removed, grass planted, parking lots and split rail fencing were installed.”

Williams says the plan is to add public restrooms, a shelter, a playground, and a walking trail. Alleghany County Parks and Recreation has already established two athletic fields, and, in keeping with Mefford’s wish to recreate a garden on the property, there is a community garden in the works.

The new park also provides river and fishing access to the Jackson.

Challenges still exist. The greatest may be finding the funding for many of the planned improvements, particularly the community garden concept. “We think it is a great idea,” Williams says, but “getting some organizations to buy into it and help to manage it may be the biggest hurdle.”

If implemented, the county parks department hopes some of the potential garden’s users would donate what they grow to the local food bank, which has been overwhelmed with demand since the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak earlier this year. Williams sees it as a fitting legacy for a meadow and a family that have served the community for more than a century.

Bull Run Mountains to reopen on June 19

VOF is happy to announce that the Bull Run Mountains Natural Area Preserve will be reopening for public visitation starting June 19. We will be resuming normal Preserve hours, which are Friday-Sunday from 8am-6pm.

Visitors must practice social distancing guidelines and groups must be limited to fewer than 10 people.

Parking facilities are limited and visitation is expected to be high during peak hours. If the parking lot fills, staff will be on site to direct excess visitors to other nearby parks.

Please observe all Preserve rules when visiting, such as no dogs, staying on designated trails, and adhering to Leave No Trace principles. Our ability to keep the Preserve open will be contingent on manageable numbers, good behavior, and continued compliance with the COVID-19 pandemic guidelines being directed by the Governor.

We encourage you to follow our Facebook and Instagram pages, as they will always contain the most up-to-date information and announcements regarding our trail system.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bullrunmountains/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bullrunmountains/

Herbert Ridgway Collins, Caroline County

Herbert Ridgway Collins, Caroline County
The Caroline County Library in Bowling Green has dedicated a reading room to Herb Collins. Photo courtesy of Dave Taylor.

Herb Collins swears his house is haunted, but he’s not complaining. Instead, he is hoping to meet up with one of the ghosts, an ancestor who died of typhoid fever in 1865 at nine years of age. She sometimes makes herself heard, he says, by opening doors and knocking pictures off the walls.

Collins thinks he saw her once, in a third-floor window, and says his love of history would make a closer run-in with her welcome. “I would have a billion questions to ask.”

Collins has been asking those questions all his life, in a quest for historical knowledge evidenced by his career at the Smithsonian Institution (where he started as a junior curator and worked his way up to executive director at the National Museum of American History) and his 2015 commendation by the Virginia legislature “for his lifetime of service to the residents of and visitors to Caroline County as a historian and preservationist.” Even the local library has a research room named after him.

It’s work Collins says he was meant to do. “I was born in history,” he says. “Rocked in an antique cradle.”

That cradle was at Green Falls, the historic Caroline County farm that has been in his family since 1787. The stately main house where Collins was born was built in 1711 along Old Stage Road, the earliest route from Fredericksburg to Richmond, and much of American history passed through its front yard.

Collins expertly restored the main house and surrounding buildings on the property.

George Washington, Sir Christopher Gates, and Count Rochambeau traveled Old Stage Road on their way to or from various campaigns in the French and Indian and Revolutionary Wars. Civil War General Philip Sheridan and his Union troops camped for four days on the property on their way to Richmond in 1863. Family lore has it that Sheridan spent those nights sleeping on the sofa that still sits in the parlor.

Born and raised at Green Falls, Collins inherited the 62 acres that were left of the property in 1981. He would come back from his job in Washington on weekends to work on restoring the house and grounds to their 18th-century state. Over the years he has reassembled the property’s original parcels, restoring it to 800 of the 950 acres it occupied at its peak.

He has protected much of the property with easements co-held by the Virginia Outdoors Foundation and the Board of Historic Resources. The easements protect the historic buildings and surrounding landscape. They also require 100-foot vegetated buffers on the bank of the Mattaponi River, which borders the property, and on Tanyard Lake, which spans 26 acres. Collins stocks the lake with largemouth bass, catfish and other freshwater fish that attract native waterfowl and other wildlife.

The 26-acre Tanyard Lake sits across from the main house.

“I’ve got ducks and geese, eagles, ospreys, egrets, cranes. It’s like a park down there,” he says.

Collins speaks proudly of the 300 acres of open space, in active agricultural production, that are once again part of Green Falls. This is history he has shaped himself, thanks to his efforts to reassemble, restore and protect the property.

Collins can list, encyclopedically, all the plants, native and not, growing in the gardens and fields that surround the house, many with mini-histories attached: The fruit of the japonica apple tree that was put in dresser drawers to keep clothing smelling sweet; the homegrown tobacco that was stored with linens to keep the moths away; and the 300-year old white mulberry tree on the property, over 15 feet in circumference, that is the last left standing from an 18th-century effort to start a silkworm plantation.

Collins’ own collection fills his room at the Caroline County library, which is available to researchers by appointment. Photo courtesy of Dave Taylor.

Alongside the larger history of Green Falls, then, live the smaller stories that bring that history home, details that Collins has preserved in the house and grounds, and that will be his legacy. 

“I love it there,” he says of his homeplace. “I want it to continue to exist as it is so that more people can see what I see every day.”

And maybe even catch a glimpse of a ghost or two.

Culpeper project adds to site being studied for new state park

Culpeper project adds to site being studied for new state park
Railroad bridge over the Rappahannock River near the new easement. Courtesy American Battlefield Trust.

Working with the Virginia Outdoors Foundation and the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, the American Battlefield Trust has protected 12.44 critical acres — part of a larger, 200-acre acquisition project — along the Rappahannock River, the Trust announced today in a joint release. This step paves the way for recreational water access at a potential new state park currently being evaluated by the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation.

Critical funding for the full $1.8 million project was provided by the federal American Battlefield Protection Program and Commonwealth matching grants — from the Virginia Land Conservation Fund, VOF’s Preservation Trust Fund, and Virginia Battlefield Preservation Fund — as well as a landowner donation.

“The completion of this project is cause for celebration on multiple fronts,” said Trust President Jim Lighthizer. “Important historic ground is protected, recreational opportunities for the community are expanded. Truly, this effort shows the power of partnerships in the conservation community – by coming together behind a singular vision, our coalition of federal and state agencies, plus nonprofit organizations and private donors – have made a lasting impact beyond what any of us might have achieved alone.”

VOF Executive Director Brett Glymph agreed, adding, “Access to the outdoors is vitally important to our quality of life and the health of our communities. The efforts of the Trust and its partners on this project will pay dividends for generations to come.”

Wartime image of Culpeper Crossing, courtesy American Battlefield Trust.

The entire 200-acre project represents two properties acquired from local businessman Bob Currier, whose family has owned the land since 1878. Currier chose to sell the Trust a 12-acre commercially zoned property situated on Route 29 and with some 5,000 feet of river frontage, and donate a larger, 187-acre property nearby. Both tracts saw fighting in the First (August 22–25, 1862) and Second (November 7, 1863) Battles of Rappahannock Station, the wartime name for the modern town of Remington. The riverside property features extant entrenchments and a roadbed dating to the Revolutionary War-era. During the Civil War, the Rappahannock River formed a natural barrier between Union territory to the north in Fauquier County and Confederate territory in Culpeper to the South, leading to repeated clashes across the region.

Since 1987, the American Battlefield Trust has protected a total of 4,896 acres at the battlefields of Brandy Station, Cedar Mountain, Kelly’s Ford and Rappahannock Station, of which nearly 1,200 acres are under easement with VOF. Recognizing the tremendous historic significance of this land, since 2015, a coalition led by the Trust — now shepherded locally by the recently launched umbrella group Friends of Culpeper Battlefields — has worked to advocate for a new Virginia State Park to be created encompassing these sites. In doing so, the Trust and Brandy Station Foundation would convey nearly all their holdings to the Commonwealth to create a turnkey park. Earlier this year, the General Assembly tasked the state’s Department of Conservation and Recreation with conducting a study to assess the “management,” “potential user activities at” and “operation of” such a park and issue recommendations regarding its viability.

The American Battlefield Trust is dedicated to preserving America’s hallowed battlegrounds and educating the public about what happened there and why it matters today. The nonprofit, nonpartisan organization has protected more than 52,000 acres associated with the Revolutionary War, War of 1812 and Civil War. Learn more at www.battlefields.org.

Dragon Run, Middle Peninsula

Dragon Run, Middle Peninsula
A fall trip down the Dragon is shaded by a thick canopy of bald cedar, swamp tupelo and red maple.

When Louise McKenna put 27 acres of pristine property along Dragon Run in Middlesex County on the market in 1985, she knew she didn’t want to see it developed.

She had no idea she was starting a movement.

A wide stretch of Dragon Run in spring.

A local pharmacist, Jimmy Morgan, had been enjoying the wild spaces along Dragon Run for years. He saw the sale as an opportunity to do something big. “He just started knocking on doors, getting people to donate,” says Janice Moore, president of Friends of Dragon Run (FODR), the nonprofit that Morgan and others formed with the mission of protecting the unique blackwater river and its surrounding wetlands. “He had a strong personality,” she adds.

He also had a talent for engaging people in a cause. For each $1,000 donation, Moore says, Morgan offered the donor a founding membership in FODR.

Once the group had raised money for the purchase, they transferred it to the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, which bought the property. VOF then protected it with an easement and held it as owner until FODR incorporated and got nonprofit certification.

FODR and its partners have been working to conserve more land in the Dragon Run watershed ever since. Today, 23% of the nearly 90,000 acres of farmland, forests and swamps that make up the watershed is protected by conservation easements held by VOF, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), or both. The Virginia Department of Forestry (VDOF) now owns and manages the nearly 10,000-acre Dragon Run State Forest. In all, these organizations protect 23,212 acres of the most pristine floodplain ecosystem left in Virginia, habitat for over 55 species of fish and 90 species of birds, all native to Virginia.

Prothonotary warblers (Protonotaria citrea) are frequent visitors during their breeding season in the spring, when they migrate from their wintering grounds in South America. (Photo credit: Teta Kaine)

“We’re about 75% to achieving our conservation goals,” says Andy Lacatell, the Virginia Chesapeake Bay director at TNC. “As with a lot of projects, that last part will be the most challenging. It’s hardest to piece the last bits together to get us across the finish line.”

The effort recently moved 14 acres closer, thanks to FODR’s latest purchase, which was placed under easement with VOF early this year. The property is FODR’s first in Gloucester and is now called the Morgan Tract, in honor of Jimmy, who passed away several years ago but whose legacy keeps growing.

“Every little scrap that you can protect will be joined up with something larger,” says Moore. “We buy as much as we can, whenever we can, and we take what people will give us.” The group owns and manages a total of 617 acres of land in the watershed, all of it protected by VOF easements.

Buying and protecting is only one half of FODR’s strategy, though. The other is education and outreach. The group organizes kayaking trips led by naturalists each spring and fall.  They are also looking for ways to engage more of the area’s youth. They have led some excursions for Boy Scout troops, as well as for local middle school students.

Spatterdock (Nuphar lutea) grow in shallow water and are rooted in the mud.

 “A science teacher and the school principal and the usual four guides went with them,” Moore says of the school trip, which took place in spring of 2019. “They stopped along the way and talked about the birds, the fish, the flora. It was a beautiful trip. The kids loved it.”

FODR had been planning a trip for 10th and 11th graders this spring, as well as for a 4-H group, until the COVID-19 pandemic forced them to cancel all spring paddle trips this year.

“We would have had a real foothold in area outdoor education if the coronavirus crisis hadn’t happened,” says Moore. “There’s been a pause but there’s still momentum.”

Plans are to try again in the fall with more area schools. “The goal would be to get as many kids as possible in Essex, King and Queen, Middlesex, Mathews and Gloucester Counties to come on a paddle before they graduate high school,” Moore explains. “That way, when it’s their turn to take care of it, they will.”

Keep checking FODR’s website for the status of the fall 2020 paddle. If you are an educator and would like your classes to experience the Dragon, contact Janice Moore at president@dragonrun.org.

Pilot fellowship program launches at Bull Run Mountains Preserve

The Virginia Outdoors Foundation has created three fellowship positions that will provide early-career conservation professionals with field experience and opportunity for growth.

The pilot Fellowship Program will be initially based at VOF’s Bull Run Mountains Natural Area Preserve on the border of Fauquier and Prince William counties.

Fellows will be working onsite at the Preserve both in the field and in the VOF Research Outpost. Joe Villari, the preserve manager, has tailored the program to the needs of the Preserve and to those of the fellows themselves.

“It’s really important that we create something that allows them to succeed and provides them with experience related to the type of the job they want,” he says. “People just starting out in the conservation field are not often given paid opportunities to build their research portfolio.”

The Preserve is the perfect place, he adds. “There is just so much here to study. We have a multitude of resources that are waiting to be explored.”

The fellowships cover three categories: Natural Sciences, Cultural History, and Special Projects. The first two categories are open to the interests of the fellows; the last will enlist their expertise on projects that Preserve staff have already identified.

Each fellow will be paid for 360 hours and have a working material stipend of $800 dollars.

The Natural Sciences Fellow has already arrived on site with her own research goals. Meredith Hart is a Virginia native who is currently pursuing a B.S. in environmental science with a concentration in wildlife studies and a minor in global health.

The different disciplines that ground her research all boil down to one topic: bugs. Hart will work with Preserve staff to conduct a large-scale invertebrate biodiversity survey and analysis. She also has funding from George Mason to conduct a second study of ants and the effects of urban locations on their life cycles.

Hart will launch both projects in mid-May, setting the traps she needs to catch and release specimens for the count.

Natural Sciences Fellow Meredith Hart at the Potomac River’s Great Falls.

Her interest in bugs was sparked when she met a scholar from the National Institute of Health who told her about a cockroach that produces a type of milk for its young. “I was fascinated by the idea that something like that even existed,” she says now. “It was a career-changing moment for me, and I had to find out more.” Her research culminated in an honors poster presentation on the unusual critter and its potential as a future source of protein for people.

“Eating insects is an integral part of human evolution, and it’s part of a sustainable future.” She adds, “They’re also pretty tasty.”

Hart will work on the survey over the summer, setting out aquatic and pitfall traps for the various bugs who live on the Preserve. She also plans to publicize her findings with blog posts on VOF’s website. She will post her findings regularly, with some fun bug facts thrown into the mix.

By the end of the summer, she will have enough data on ants to present at a national conference for undergraduate research.

Villari hopes the success of this pilot effort will lead to funding for more fellowships in the future. “The idea is to be able to put forward a portfolio that shows what we were able to do with the amount of money we allocated ourselves this year. Then we can ask outside funders for more, so that we can do more.” Follow fellowship-related posts on our Bull Run Mountains page or the Preserve’s Facebook page.