The Nature Conservancy in Virginia

Please join us in welcoming our new Director of Development, Bramble Klipple! 🎉 Bramble is a Virginia native and comes to TNC from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, NY, where she worked for the past nine years, most recently as Senior Director of Advancement guiding both fundraising and communications strategies. This is actually a welcome back to TNC for Bramble, as she worked in development and campaign positions out of TNC’s world office in Arlington between 2007-2015. Prior to that, she held various development communications, corporate and foundation relations roles at her alma mater, The College of William and Mary. Bramble enjoys camping and kayaking with her husband and has two grown children who reside in upstate New York. We are thrilled to have Bramble on board to help us meet our ambitious conservation goals in Virginia! 📸 Danny White/TNC

Happy #NationalCanoeDay! 🛶 We would like to give a huge shout-out to the folks who paddled with us at the Powell River float and cleanup event earlier this month! During the event, cohosted by Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation Natural Heritage, 29 volunteers canoed down the Powell River for a 10-mile stretch between the Flanary Bridge and the Beach Grove Bridge in Southwest Virginia. Both of these public launches are brand new and built by Tennessee Valley Authority. The day ended with a haul of 26 tires, a small engine, a playhouse and even the remnants of a large Hot Wheels toy! Interested in volunteering to help Virginia's #GreatOutdoors? Head over to nature.org/vavolunteer to sign up for our summer cleanup days! Photos: Nick Proctor/TNC   #GreatOutdoorsVA #ExploreVirginia #GreatOutdoorsMonth #GetOutsideVA

Last month, Monarch Watch awarded TNC with 350 milkweed plugs, a wonderful species for all pollinators, but especially for the Monarch butterfly that migrates through Virginia every fall. 🦋 A team of six dedicated volunteers and two TNC staff members planted the milkweed across three locations in the Clinch watershed: the community of Dante, Bluebell Island, and the University of Virginia Oxbow Center in St. Paul. The work involved clearing surface vegetation, digging shallow holes, and planting the live milkweed plugs, setting the stage for a thriving new habitat. Our own Clinch Valley Community Outreach Manager, Nick Proctor, took an extra step to educate the public with informative signage (check out photo 5) that will hopefully lead to a higher survival rate for the milkweed. If you haven’t been to the beautiful Bluebell Island to hike and explore, here is another reason to visit! 🥾 Photos: Nick Proctor/TNC

Summer has officially arrived and we're celebrating with the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly, the state insect of Virginia! Dive into this sunny season by getting outside and exploring all that Virginia's great outdoors has to offer. Spot something special? 🌾🐞 Snap a photo of any natural wonder that catches your eye and tag us in your adventure. Let’s fill this summer season with shared moments of awe! 📸🍃 Photo: Lauren Peeler Brice/TNC Photo Contest 2010 #GreatOutdoorsVA #FirstDayOfSummer #ExploreVirginia #GreatOutdoorsMonth #GetOutsideVA

No one is free until everyone is free. Today we observe #Juneteenth and commemorate the day in 1865 that the last remaining enslaved people in the United States found out they had been freed. Our mission to solve the planet’s greatest challenges depends on a future where people and nature thrive together. That means doing our part to ensure healthy lands and waters, providing safe access to the outdoors, and building communities where nature is an integral part of life. To learn more about the history of Juneteenth, visit: https://nature.ly/3z2n0Zm Photo: Wildflowers grow in a meadow in Southwest Virginia; Steven David Johnson

Did you know nearly 90% of the world’s flowering plants and 75% of our agricultural crops rely entirely or in part on animal pollination? Unfortunately, pollinators face many threats, including habitat loss, invasive species and the overuse and misuse of pesticides. June 17-23 is #PollinatorWeek, an annual celebration of the importance of bees, butterflies and the many other insects that keep our gardens abuzz with activity! 🐝 🦋 🌼 Explore eight great ways to help pollinators and other insects from your own backyard: https://nature.ly/4eqplxo Photo: Danae Wolfe/TNC

🌲 Let’s learn about longleaf pine in Virginia! 🌲 Our Piney Grove Preserve in Southeastern Virginia is part of a historic longleaf pine system that stretches all the way to Texas. Today, TNC Virginia’s Pinelands Restoration Specialist, Andi Clinton, comes to you from Piney Grove where we are celebrating the preserve’s 25th anniversary. Andi shares how TNC and our partners are restoring the iconic longleaf pine savannas in Virginia, which are full of biodiversity and rich history. Next week, we’ll pass the longleaf pine cone to The Nature Conservancy in North Carolina. Stay tuned to learn about the species unique to their state’s pinelands!✨

Over the course of 11 days in May, extraordinary volunteers and staff collected a whopping 70 trash cans full of eelgrass from South Bay on the Eastern Shore! With over 600 volunteer hours logged and an average of 13 helpful snorkelers joining us each collection day, our eelgrass seed curing facility in the Town of Oyster is now bustling with activity, housing all 12 holding tanks with eelgrass.👏 We had a slower start due to rough wind and weather, but we finished strong with warmer weather—great low tides and lots of cool critters (sea cucumbers, silverside fish and even a clam with fish eggs inside!).   Eelgrass has a number of benefits — from serving as fish and marine life habitat to helping purify the water and capturing carbon. The eelgrass seeds will cure in the holding tanks and be stirred daily until the end of July. In late July, we will sieve out the seeds and hold them at a constant temperature and salinity until October, when they will be planted via broadcasting from a boat within our coastal bays to continue the largest successful seagrass restoration project in the world!

Whimbrel Watch 2024 counted 9,887 migrating Whimbrel - the highest count since the watch began in 2009! The highest daily count was 3,961 on May 20th, and you can see the data from each night, as well as other cool historical and current Whimbrel Watch information on our nifty Story Map here: https://lnkd.in/eRMtHbNK... Big thanks to all of the volunteers and community members who came by the dock at Box Tree to assist the VVCR Migratory Bird Team in this effort! Your help is so appreciated. For more information on Whimbrel Watch and other "birdy" projects at VVCR, please contact Migratory Bird Specialist, Mario Balitbit at [email protected]. For more info on all of our TNC VVCR programs, please visit nature.org/vvcr or contact Outreach and Education Coordinator, Margaret Van Clief at [email protected]. Thank you again to our volunteers, the local community and Whimbrel Watch founding partners at The Center for Conservation Biology! 📸 Photos 1, 4, 5 and 6: Margaret Van Clief/TNC Photo 2: Mario Balitbit/TNC Photo 3: Isabel Hayman/TNC

Longleaf pine brings 9 states together 🤩. From Texas to Virginia, we are working together to restore this incredible and biodiverse habitat, which once covered 90 million acres of land. Today, there are just 5.2 million acres, up from a historical low of 3.2 million acres two decades ago. The Southern states focus on restoring and protecting longleaf pine because it is home to a diversity of plants and animals and has great benefits for combating the changing climate. ☀️Stay tuned over the coming weeks to learn about the unique longleaf pine forests and restoration efforts in TNC Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida! #LongleafPine