Registration for our annual statewide conference is open to all Virginia Master Naturalist members on Monday, July 17 at noon. An email with the registration link will go out at noon from the Volunteer Management, and we will also post the registration link at that time on the conference website. We hope VMN volunteers from across the state will be able to join us in September in Front Royal!
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The Virginia Master Naturalist program’s state office is now accepting nominations for six statewide awards: Volunteer of the Year, Project of the Year (with four subcategories), and Advisor of the Year. These awards will be judged by the VMN statewide office team and at least one VMN Steering Committee member. We will announce and distribute the awards at our annual conference, Friday evening, September 15.
To submit a nomination, please send the information requested for that particular award to Michelle Prysby, mprysby@vt.edu. Nominations are due by August 7 at 5 pm. You can read about last year's winners and nominees here! Volunteer of the Year This award is intended to recognize a volunteer who has made outstanding contributions to natural resource education, citizen science, and/or stewardship. There is no minimum requirement for amount of hours or length of service for a volunteer to receive this award. In your nominations, please include the following:
Project of the Year Subcategories: Education/Outreach, Citizen Science, Stewardship, Administrative This award is intended to recognize a chapter or individual volunteer’s project that has made significant and noteworthy positive impacts for natural resource education, citizen science, and/or stewardship within the last 1-2 years. Nominated projects should be projects created and led by a VMN volunteer or chapter, but they may be in partnership with other entities. We will give awards in each of four subcategories:
In your nominations, please include the following:
Chapter Advisor of the Year This award is intended to recognize a chapter advisor who has made significant and noteworthy contributions to a VMN chapter within the last 1-2 years. In your nominations, please include the following:
Please help us recognize the outstanding people and work of your chapters!  View from the Northern Virginia 4-H Educational Center in Front Royal, VA. Image provided by the 4-H Center. SAVE THE DATE! The Virginia Master Naturalist Conference will be from Sept. 15 to 17 this year! Our 2017 VMN Statewide Conference and Training is just 5 months away, and members of the VMN-Shenandoah Chapter and VMN program staff have been busy planning the program, lining up instructors, making arrangements with the venue, and handling all the logistics to make this our biggest and best conference yet. This is an exclusive event, open only to VMN volunteers! The Venue We'll be taking over the Northern Virginia 4-H Educational Center in Front Royal, VA, where we will make use of up to 8 classroom and meeting spaces, grounds with a trail that connects to the Appalachian Trail, a large dining hall, and lodging. The center is on top of a hill with excellent views of a beautiful part of the state. The Program We have approximately 40 sessions for attendees to choose from. Here are some of the topics you can learn about:
On top of all that, if you want to come early, we will have 5 different pre-conference sessions on Friday, including a program at Blandy Experimental Farm and State Arboretum.  Approximately 200 VMN volunteers joined us for the 2016 statewide conference, which was hosted by the Blue Ridge Foothills and Lakes Chapter and held at the Skelton 4-H Center in Wirtz, VA. The Traditions
Our program is old enough to now have some traditions, and we’ll be bringing back your favorites to the conference as well. Expect the Friday night “Chapter Share Fair” where you can show off the great things your chapter is doing and gather ideas from others. The VMN photo contest will return in a new digital format . (Note that there are limited entries per chapter; some chapters have an internal competition ahead of time to choose their entries.) We will also have program awards, so watch for information about nominations which will be sent out in the coming weeks. The Registration Process A brief agenda is now posted on the conference website. The full program will be posted in May so that you can look at the choice of sessions and pick your favorites (and back-ups, because sessions fill quickly!) The main registration will open in mid-July. Registration details will be sent through the Volunteer Management System once they are posted, so watch your email for that information. We hope to see you in September! By Marie Majarov & Michelle Prysby  "Getting Down and Dirty" by Capt. Debbie Ritter, VMN-Eastern Shore Chapter. First place winner in the 'Virginia Master Naturalists In Action' category, 2016. Photography is an important part of many Virginia Master Naturalist projects. Citizen science projects such as Wildlife Mapping, the recent City Nature Challenge, and RareQuest all require photos of observations in order for them to be research-quality. High quality images, whether mounted on a chapter's display at an Earth Day event or used in a public presentation, can enhance education and interpretive programs. And, simply documenting VMN projects through photos shared on our photo-sharing site is critical for us to be able to share and describe the work that our volunteers do with all our stakeholders.
Given this central role of photography in the Virginia Master Naturalist program, our annual volunteer photo contest has become a valued tradition. It started as an expansion of a chapter-wide contest that our Historic Rivers Chapter was doing. Now, each year, VMN chapters send their top photos to the VMN Statewide Conference and Volunteer Training, and local expert judges select the winners in several categories. While there's no monetary prize, winners receive ribbons and their photographs are recognized on our website and in our newsletter, as well as at the conference. Since this statewide contest started in 2012, it has been in print format. Submissions had to be transported to the contest and displayed in standard-sized black frames. We are excited to announce that the 2017 Virginia Master Naturalist Statewide Photography Contest will be conducted in a digital format! We hope this new format will encourage and make it easier for chapters to enter the contest and also offer an opportunity for a few digital lessons to be learned. We know it will have a much smaller ecological footprint than frames, mats, packing and printing! Marie Majarov, 2017 VMN State Conference Photography Contest Coordinator, has prepared a download of useful information to help with image preparation and will be glad to talk with representatives from each chapter to answer questions. Full contest rules, the entry form, and a digital format guide are posted on the contest webpage. All Virginia Master Naturalist Chapters are invited to enter photopraphs and may use any means that they wish in order to select photos to submit for representing their chapter at the statewide contest. Internal chapter contests are encouraged since photography is an important part of VMNs making and recording observations and a skill essential in communicating to the public as part of Education and Outreach. Each VMN Chapter may enter one photograph in each of the following three categories, for a total of 3 entries per chapter:
The contest acknowledges the wonderful talent that exists in our membership, as well as the important role that photography can play in teaching and learning about natural resources. The entries will be judged by a qualified group of judges who will select First place, Second place, and Third place for all three categories. Honorable Mention(s) will be awarded as the judges see fit. All entered pictures will be exhibited via a slide show at the Northern Virginia 4-H Educational Center for the duration of the 2017 VMN Statewide Conference and Training. If all goes well embracing a digital format this year, next year we can expand our categories and opportunities! Check out the 2016 and 2014 contest winners for inspiration!  Checking in with Natural Heritage
The Virginia Natural Heritage Program with the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation released their annual newsletter last month. The Virginia Natural Heritage Program's mission is to conserve Virginia's biodiversity through biological inventory, data management and sharing, environmental review, land protection, and the stewardship of the Virginia Natural Area Preserves System. In the newsletter, you can learn about Virginia's newest Natural Area Preserve, actions taken to protect one of Virginia's largest populations of hibernating little brown bats, confirmation of an endangered mussel in Nelson County, the discovery of globally rare plants and natural communities, and more. Virginia Master Naturalists volunteer with Natural Heritage in several ways. They help provide education, citizen science, and stewardship at the Natural Area Preserves. VMNs reported more than 800 hours of service at nine Natural Area Preserves in 2016. This work is most notable on the Eastern Shore, where Dot Field, the VMN-Eastern Shore Chapter Advisor and Eastern Shore Region Steward, says, "They are true extensions of my eyes and ears and my hands and feet. Quality stewardship of Natural Heritage resources on the Eastern Shore would not be possible without Master Naturalist volunteers." Virginia Master Naturalists also have been collaborating with Natural Heritage on the RareQuest project, through which VMN volunteers visit and document occurrences of rare species across the state. Along with being extremely supportive sponsors of the VMN program since its inception, Virginia Natural Heritage Program staff have led classes and field trips for VMN chapters and co-developed our Virginia Biogeography curriculum. Natural Heritage vegetation ecologist Gary Fleming generously shared his high-quality photos and descriptions of Virginia's natural communities for use in our curriculum materials. You can watch a video version of his presentation on our curriculum page. |
