Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy

Before the chill of winter rolls over the Catoctins and we settle in for winter, we need to do one last habitat restoration project – and we really need your help to get it completed.

We hope you can come out for this – and bring friends and family. It’s a great end-of-the year event:

Creating Meadow Habitat at the Blue Ridge Center for Environmental Stewardship ― Saturday, December 3, 1:00 p.m. 

In October over a dozen people began restoring two meadows, the most threatened habitat in the U.S., at the Blue Ridge Center for Environmental Stewardship in northwestern Loudoun County near Harpers Ferry. 

To restore this habitat and the wildlife that depends on it we must first cut down all the Autumn Olive, a highly aggressive invasive alien shrub, and several other trees and shrubs which are rapidly taking over the two meadows. 

After the trees and shrubs are cut down we are using them to build brush piles which wildlife can use for shelter. While we accomplished a lot in October we didn’t finish. 

If you are a high school student or older and interested in helping contact Joe Coleman at jcoleman@loudounwilldife.org or 540-554-2542.

Wow, from talking to some of the volunteers at the tree planting today, a diverse group came out to help plant the trees!

There were students, scouts, the Leesburg Host Lions Club and more who came out for the tree planting at Ida Lee Park in Leesburg. 

At least 87 people came out with shovels and gloves in hand and while it started at 9:00, they teams made short work of the planting with most of the trees in the ground by 10:30.

Nice job to everyone who came out!  This tree planting will restore a riparian buffer along Big Spring Creek and will help improve water quality in our community.

Photos are posted here in our Facebook Photo Album.

Saturday, November 5, 9:00 a.m.  Join Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy, Loudoun County and the Town of Leesburg at Ida Lee Park for a tree planting event designed to improve the water quality of Big Spring Creek and create new wildlife habitat in the park. 

Volunteers should meet in the parking area below the A.V. Symington Aquatic Center. Participants are encouraged to bring a shovel and gloves.

The new trees will be planted along Big Spring Creek in what is known as a “riparian” area. The trees will improve the creek’s water quality by filtering stormwater runoff before it reaches the creek.  Such forested stream buffer can improve stream water quality by removing sediment and contaminants, lowering stream temperatures, and preventing stream bank erosion.

The project is funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency through the Chesapeake Bay Small Watershed Grants program, which is administered through the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. The grant funding is managed by the Loudoun County Water Resources Team within the Department of Building and Development.

Call Scott Sandberg with the Loudoun County Department of Building and Development at 571-258-3304 for more information. http://www.loudoun.gov/Default.aspx?tabid=3927

Yes, I’m talking about “our” Monarchs. The butterfly in this photo is on its migration to Mexico right now.

She will fly through parched prairies and fields all the way to Oyamel pine forests and hibernate through the winter. The future of the population rides on the wings of individuals like this one.

I ask you – What will become of this amazing species? The latest report from Monarch Watch is sobering. I hope you will click over and read it but I will also include an excerpt:

http://monarchwatch.org/blog/2011/09/monarch-population-status-12/ 

The migration is just beginning to navigate a 1000 miles of hell – a nearly flowerless/nectarless and waterless expanse of central KS, OK, TX, and NE MX….

It is too late for rains to change the situation in TX and northern MX. Monarchs will make it to the overwintering sites but their numbers will be significantly reduced by these conditions. My expectation is that that the overwintering numbers will be the lowest ever (previous low 1.92 hectares) and that the arriving butterflies will be in relatively poor shape with low fat reserves. If the average condition (mass) of the overwintering monarchs is lower than average, mortality during the winter could also be high. Other scenarios could include low returning numbers next spring with a reduced reproductive capacity due to low fat reserves. Keep your fingers crossed that there are no winter storms in MX that could make matters worse.

The fields at the Phillips Farm in Waterford are brimming with nectar-rich goldenrod right now. Nectar sources like these help our migrants build up fat reserves but will it be enough?

Will she and others of her kind find more rich fields along her travels before hitting the devastated lands of Texas and beyond?

In the last Habitat Herald, I wrote about “the slow ride of population decline.” In the case of Monarchs, it doesn’t feel so slow. But we have a choice – we can play a part in recovering a viable ecosystem. It won’t help the Monarchs or other species this year but the sooner we all start, the sooner improvement will come.

Every native plant you plant makes a difference.

Every journey starts with a single step, a single wing beat.

Will you convert an area of your yard into a flower garden filled with milkweed, goldenrod, asters, Joe Pye Weed, New York Ironweed and others? I have 50 seed kits left and would love to see 50 new people contact me to request a seed kit. Plant the seeds now — and hopefully they will blossom and bloom next spring.

Support Monarch Watch and register your garden as a certified monarch waystation, stay in touch, be part of the change.

Visit the Native Plant Sale in Broadlands this Saturday and start planting.

Second Annual Broadlands Virginia Native Plants Showcase & Sale

Now is YOUR chance – Great variety of both native plants and trees for you to learn about and purchase.

Experts will be on-hand to answer your questions about the different varieties and advise on the best plants for your yard.

Gardening with native plants so much cooler than using plants from Asia and elsewhere! It rebuilds a healthy ecosystem and brings back the birds and other wildlife.

Every native plant you plan makes a difference!

Take the Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy’s challenge and plant native – read more here!

Vendors:
- Hill House Native Plant Farm and Nursery
- Beech Tree Farm

Bring the family to enjoy this great display of Virginia native plants

Fall is the best time to plant!

Add a value to your home by native plants and sustainable landscaping (learn more…)

Mark Your Calendars
Saturday, October 1st
10:00am – 3:00pm

Where: Broadlands Nature Center
21907 Claiborne Parkway
Broadlands, VA 20148

Late in the day this past Saturday, three young people came up to the Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy’s booth at the Bluemont Fair and handed us a big wad of cash and some change, equaling $127. 

It would be an understatement to say that we were speechless and overwhelmed by their generosity. 

In talking to them, we found out that they represent a group of young people in Round Hill called the 5 R’s, who are dedicated to the principles of reduce, reuse, recycle, repair, and repeat. 

For the Bluemont Fair they created and sold a number of arts and crafts made out of recycled materials, including crayons, bottle caps, bottle cap magnets, and soda tab chains, and donated all their earnings to the Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy.

In 2010, the 5 R’s helped us plant trees and shrubs on Waterford’s Phillips Farm, a joint habitat restoration project of the Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy and the Waterford Foundation.  

We were thrilled when they helped with what has been our most successful habitat restoration project to date, and very thankful with their generous donation which will be used for similar work in the future.

The photo above was taken by Kim Ramsey at the fair. Pictured are some of the crafts, crayons and pop-top bracelets, that were for sale and four members of the 5 R’s: Alexis Zimmer-Chu (top), Erin Ramsey, Ellie Ramsey, and Patrick Ramsey.  Note: A lot more kids are involved in the 5Rs (7 families in all). What a wonderful group! Our heartfelt thanks to everyone!

Monarch butterflies that you see right now are the last generation of the year. This is the generation that will live up to 9 months! (rather than 2-4 weeks) and migrate 2000+ miles to overwinter in a tiny forest area in Mexico that they have never been to before.

Here is a great video that shows their lifecycle:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGmobCkApO0

This past spring, when the Monarchs were migrating north from Mexico, they found terrible drought conditions in Texas. Texas is a critical stop for the Monarchs in this relay of life. Finding little by way of nectar and host plants, the Monarchs pushed further north and we saw this tired generation showing up in gardens here in April and May to lay their eggs and give their last hurrah.

Throughout the summer and now in early fall, reports of Monarchs have been low. When this last generation of the year heads to Mexico, Monarch Watch will do a count to see what the population looks like.

If you would like to help Monarchs, you can plant a Monarch Waystation this fall. Contact us and we’ll send you a seed kit while supplies last. More information about monarch waystations can be found here. Once you have your waystation planted, be sure to register it with Monarch Watch and get involved with the community!

Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy is active in a number of coalitions across the area.  Coalitions are a great way to bring together diverse groups of people and organizations with differing perspectives to address local issues.

One coalition that we support is the Choose Clean Water Coalition, and given that hurricane Irene is coming our way and we’re about to see a lot of water, I thought I’d highlight that here today.

The Choose Clean Water coalition brings together people and nearly 200 organizations from Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia, working together to help everyone in the region choose clean water.

You can follow the work of this coalition through Facebook, Twitter, and through Podcasts, as well as through the website which summarizes key issues.

Clean water is truly one of the very few things we cannot live without, yet here in the US we certainly take it for granted. 

Here in Loudoun, we live in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, and some serious work needs to be done to restore the habitat and thereby the water that runs through our communities.

If you’re interested in learning more about water quality and getting your feet wet locally, check out our Stream Monitoring Program.  It’s a lot of fun!

You may remember that last Novemver we did a habitat restoration project at Freedom Park in Leesburg by creating a rain garden filled with all sorts of wonderful native plants. 

Well, we went back this year with a great team on volunteers to do a bit of weeding and upkeep. Here’s the report from Joe and you can check out photos from the event in our Facebook Gallery:

When we got there all of us were impressed with how well the Freedom Park Rain Garden has done since we helped put it in last year.  Not only was almost everything we planted thriving, there were also a lot of invasive alien plants that didn’t belong. This left our team of 13 volunteers with a lot of work to do. 

While it was warmer than we had expected because of the intensity of the sun and harder work than several of us had anticipated, we finished the task by 6:30 pm.  We removed 31 large bags of invasive plants and spread 40 bags of mulch around the remaining shrubs and perennials. We did this to help stop the invasive plants from coming back and to retain moisture and prevent soil erosion around the remaining plants plants.

It was also incredible to see all those native pollinators as well as honeybees nectaring on all those plants we had planted.

National Wildlife Federation recently published this article entitled, “Backyard Habitat: Making Dollars and Sense in Your Yard.”

http://www.nwf.org/News-and-Magazines/National-Wildlife/Gardening/Archives/2011/Making-Dollars-and-Sense.aspx

Fall is a great time to plant new trees and shrubs around your garden. It’s also a great time to sow seeds for perennials that will come up in the springtime.

Check our Gardening for Wildlife Plant List  for native plants that will bring your landscaping to life!