Blog

The leaves have started to change color across Northern Virginia, and we have survived the last balmy days of October. As the month comes to a close, temperatures have dropped, and we have a few tips on how to help the environment you are cultivating make it through to the spring. In the fall, plants tend to grow more slowly as daylight hours decrease, and the cold slows their metabolic rate. Leaves fall off trees because they no longer catch as much sunlight for photosynthes

Welcome our first Communications Fellow, Kojo Baidoo! Kojo brings to NVCT a strong understanding of ecology and conservation, experience in the field, evident passion, and a bonus: he’s a birder! As Kojo likes to put it, “birding has really guided a lot of my life decisions.” We’re excited to see what Kojo creates to connect others with our work. Did you grow up in the area? “I grew up in Maryland in northern Baltimore County, slightly outside of what most consider the DMV.

We have another new fellow that is helping us achieve our goals: a Darden Board Fellow! Jake Cargal-Bley is currently studying at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business and will serve on our board for one year. During his time on NVCT’s board, Jake will work on a project to help us build capacity to accomplish more impactful conservation work in Northern Virginia. Are you from the area? If not, where did you grow up? “I’m from Seattle and moved to Northern Virg

Pumpkins, squash, corn, and apples come to mind when you think of the fall harvest. But did you know you can acquire sustenance from the land around you? And we’re not talking about farming. Before humans developed agrarian cultures, we got nutrition from edible plants, fruits, and nuts growing naturally in our environment. Harvesting these naturally occurring items is called foraging. Foraging was one of the main ways early Indigenous peoples gathered sustenance from the lan

Most of the land we conserve at NVCT is private; willing landowners recognize the value of nature in their own backyards and choose to preserve it. To track the properties we protect, we give them names. For those that won’t become public nature preserves or are not part of an existing public space, we typically assign a name based on the landowner’s name. We often joke that when announcing some of our land closings, we could include any nondescript forest photo in the announ

This month’s Nearby Nature Network webinar featured “Sustain Fairfax,” a web platform that helps you reduce your personal carbon footprint, build community connections, and save money! This web-based platform is free to join and open to all Fairfax County residents. Ahead of the webinar we interviewed members of the Sustain Fairfax team to tell us how the platform came to be and how people can make the most of it. Fairfax County residents can join NVCT’s team on the Sustain F

This year, American Rivers named the Potomac River the most endangered river in America. The designation came in April, following a January sewer collapse that released 240 million gallons of untreated sewage into the Potomac. American Rivers cited the spill, aging infrastructure, and a lack of watershed-level planning around data center expansion as some of the biggest threats to the river’s health. These threats add strain to a river already affected by climate change and r

The Northern Virginia Conservation Trust (NVCT) has placed 89 acres of undeveloped forest in King George County, just outside Fredericksburg, under a conservation easement. Bordering an existing 138-acre preserve protected by the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, this property expands protected habitat. For us, its protection reminded us that in a region with growing development, undistrubed lands of this size are particularly critical. At NVCT, we conserve properties ranging fro

Lucas Theobald is our current Land Conservation Fellow. Lucas joined the team in May and has since been given the full NVCT experience. Lucas helped the team run the annual gala, has been a part of board meetings, and has joined members of the lands team on various site visits. Lucas is an experienced geographic information systems (GIS) user and had previously worked on creating maps for campaigns centered around the conservation of a specific region. This stood out to us, a

It’s been a rainy August, and you may feel like this is more than the usual summer showers. It’s not just an off year; research shows that rainfall has increased worldwide over the past decade. The culprit behind these downpours is climate change, the villain in many natural phenomena. Don’t worry, it’s not all doom and gloom; science also helps us understand how we can be better prepared to handle heavy rainfall. Climate change is often seen as rising temperatures that melt