Hello, VMNs. It’s getting warmer! As you prep your gear to get back outside and doing those volunteer service activities, make sure to be up to date on the VMN Bi-weekly emails.
This email includes:
Statewide Impacts and Infographic
VMN volunteers contributed more service hours than ever and made some impressive impacts in 2024! See this infographic for a summary of hours and other statistics. And, if you missed it in the last issue of The Pollinator, here’s a summary of 2024 program impacts. (FYI - Michelle will be working on chapter-level infographics as time allows; we hope to get those out to you over the month of April.)
Grab Your Phone, Get Some Video!
We are crowdsourcing material for our VMN video, and we need your help! We’ve started getting some great submissions (THANK YOU!), but we definitely need more video footage showing a wide diversity of people, places, and activities. In particular, we need:
We also need general video footage showing nature, the wide range of environments where VMNs volunteer (including urban areas), and a diversity of VMN volunteers in action (training, volunteering, working together.) These also can be short clips, but they don’t need to involve microphones, as the sound won’t be important.
Please see this document for the full description of what we need and technical specifications. Submissions are due April 7.
Continuing Education Opportunities
Reminder: VMN Continuing Education Webinar for March
Date: March 26, 12:00-1:00 pm
Title: Virginia Gray Fox Project
Description: This webinar will include reasoning for, methodology, and preliminary results of the Virginia Gray Fox Project (VGFP). The VGFP is a collaborative project between Virginia Tech and Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources. The project consists of a statewide remote camera trap survey to establish the current distribution of gray foxes and exploration of historical data to assess evidence for gray fox distributional decline. Out of public interest and the sheer size of the project, the VGFP has grown to include a community collaboration in which members of the commonwealth are actively participating in data collection and data processing. The status of these efforts and the plan for our second field season will be discussed.
Presenter: Victoria Monette is a second-year Wildlife Conservation PhD student at Virginia Tech working in Dr. Marcella Kelly’s lab. She is broadly interested in carnivore ecology, movement, and spatiotemporal interactions among carnivores. Her PhD research will include a state-wide camera survey to determine current gray fox distribution, quantify evidence of presumed gray fox decline across VA, and determine the relative impacts of bottom-up (i.e., habitat change) versus top-down (i.e., interspecific competition) ecological pressures on gray foxes using an occupancy modeling framework. She will create a current distribution map of gray fox occurrence across the state and use historic camera surveys to assess evidence of decline. Results will be used to develop conservation management plans for the gray fox across Virginia.
Pre-registration required
Project Learning Tree Workshops
These opportunities are great for VMN volunteers who would like to do more youth environmental education. The Project Learning Tree is a research-based curriculum that you can use in many situations.
Tuesday, April 8, Explore Your Environment K-8 educator training at Eastern Shore Soil & Water Conservation District Office in Accomac ($11)
Tuesday, April 15, Trees & Me & Growing UP WILD Early childhood joint training with Project WILD at Daniel Boone Wilderness Trail Interpretive Center at Natural Tunnel State Park in Duffield (grant-funded; free)
Monday, April 21, Explore Your Environment K-8 educator training at Twin Lakes State Park in Green Bay (grant-funded; free)
Specific information including time, on-site location, & registration available at: https://project-learning-tree.odoo.com/
If you have questions or would like to learn more before registering, contact Lesley, State Coordinator for Virginia Project Learning Tree at [email protected] or (434) 981-6742.
Caterpillars Count Webinars
In the Caterpillars Count! Project participants conduct surveys on the branches of trees and shrubs to monitor seasonal variation and abundance of arthropods like caterpillars, beetles, and spiders, and to establish critical baseline data for evaluating long term trends.
For more details on the project and what hosting a survey site for Caterpillars Count! entails, watch the short video on the project website, and check out the Frequently Asked Questions page.
Register for one of their free training webinars offered in April and learn how to get involved!
Wednesday, April 9th, 1:00 - 2:30 pm ET
Thursday, April 17th, 11:00 am - 12:30 pm ET
Wednesday, April 23rd, 12:00 - 1:30 pm ET
Questions? Contact: [email protected].
VMN Statewide Conference Update
We have made some updates to the conference webpage that include our schedule and the dates registration will open. Check it out!
This email includes:
- Statewide Impacts and Infographic
- Grab Your Phone, Get Some Video!
- Continuing Education Opportunities
- VMN Conference Update
Statewide Impacts and Infographic
VMN volunteers contributed more service hours than ever and made some impressive impacts in 2024! See this infographic for a summary of hours and other statistics. And, if you missed it in the last issue of The Pollinator, here’s a summary of 2024 program impacts. (FYI - Michelle will be working on chapter-level infographics as time allows; we hope to get those out to you over the month of April.)
Grab Your Phone, Get Some Video!
We are crowdsourcing material for our VMN video, and we need your help! We’ve started getting some great submissions (THANK YOU!), but we definitely need more video footage showing a wide diversity of people, places, and activities. In particular, we need:
- Videos of individual VMN volunteers talking about what they do as volunteers compared to what they do/did in other parts of their lives. (For example, “During the week I’m an accountant, but on the weekends I’m a naturalist volunteer, sharing my knowledge about black bears.”)
- Videos of individual VMN volunteers talking about their basic training courses (what you learned, what you did in training)
- Videos of individual VMN volunteers talking about how the program has been transformative for them; how their lives have changed in some way since becoming a VMN volunteer.
- Videos of partner organization representatives (like chapter advisors!) talking about working with VMN volunteers and how they contribute to natural resource conservation.
We also need general video footage showing nature, the wide range of environments where VMNs volunteer (including urban areas), and a diversity of VMN volunteers in action (training, volunteering, working together.) These also can be short clips, but they don’t need to involve microphones, as the sound won’t be important.
Please see this document for the full description of what we need and technical specifications. Submissions are due April 7.
Continuing Education Opportunities
Reminder: VMN Continuing Education Webinar for March
Date: March 26, 12:00-1:00 pm
Title: Virginia Gray Fox Project
Description: This webinar will include reasoning for, methodology, and preliminary results of the Virginia Gray Fox Project (VGFP). The VGFP is a collaborative project between Virginia Tech and Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources. The project consists of a statewide remote camera trap survey to establish the current distribution of gray foxes and exploration of historical data to assess evidence for gray fox distributional decline. Out of public interest and the sheer size of the project, the VGFP has grown to include a community collaboration in which members of the commonwealth are actively participating in data collection and data processing. The status of these efforts and the plan for our second field season will be discussed.
Presenter: Victoria Monette is a second-year Wildlife Conservation PhD student at Virginia Tech working in Dr. Marcella Kelly’s lab. She is broadly interested in carnivore ecology, movement, and spatiotemporal interactions among carnivores. Her PhD research will include a state-wide camera survey to determine current gray fox distribution, quantify evidence of presumed gray fox decline across VA, and determine the relative impacts of bottom-up (i.e., habitat change) versus top-down (i.e., interspecific competition) ecological pressures on gray foxes using an occupancy modeling framework. She will create a current distribution map of gray fox occurrence across the state and use historic camera surveys to assess evidence of decline. Results will be used to develop conservation management plans for the gray fox across Virginia.
Pre-registration required
Project Learning Tree Workshops
These opportunities are great for VMN volunteers who would like to do more youth environmental education. The Project Learning Tree is a research-based curriculum that you can use in many situations.
Tuesday, April 8, Explore Your Environment K-8 educator training at Eastern Shore Soil & Water Conservation District Office in Accomac ($11)
Tuesday, April 15, Trees & Me & Growing UP WILD Early childhood joint training with Project WILD at Daniel Boone Wilderness Trail Interpretive Center at Natural Tunnel State Park in Duffield (grant-funded; free)
Monday, April 21, Explore Your Environment K-8 educator training at Twin Lakes State Park in Green Bay (grant-funded; free)
Specific information including time, on-site location, & registration available at: https://project-learning-tree.odoo.com/
If you have questions or would like to learn more before registering, contact Lesley, State Coordinator for Virginia Project Learning Tree at [email protected] or (434) 981-6742.
Caterpillars Count Webinars
In the Caterpillars Count! Project participants conduct surveys on the branches of trees and shrubs to monitor seasonal variation and abundance of arthropods like caterpillars, beetles, and spiders, and to establish critical baseline data for evaluating long term trends.
For more details on the project and what hosting a survey site for Caterpillars Count! entails, watch the short video on the project website, and check out the Frequently Asked Questions page.
Register for one of their free training webinars offered in April and learn how to get involved!
Wednesday, April 9th, 1:00 - 2:30 pm ET
Thursday, April 17th, 11:00 am - 12:30 pm ET
Wednesday, April 23rd, 12:00 - 1:30 pm ET
Questions? Contact: [email protected].
VMN Statewide Conference Update
We have made some updates to the conference webpage that include our schedule and the dates registration will open. Check it out!
RSS Feed