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We encourage all of our VMN chapters to check out the City Nature Challenge and consider not just participating, but using it as an opportunity to organize some public events to raise awareness of biological diversity, especially in urbanized areas.

Bioblitzes are probably the best known natural history citizen science events. These are typically periods of biological surveying in an attempt to record all the living species within a designated area. Groups of scientists, naturalists and public volunteers conduct intensive field study over a continuous time period (usually 24 hours) and record what they find. A Bioblitz provides a snap shot in time. While it is certainly not a complete record of what lives in the location, if you take enough snap shots over different times and seasons, you can get a good picture of what is going on there. 

The free iNaturalist app is now more-or-less the standard way for bioblitzes and other citizen science projects to record natural history observations. The beauty of the app is that with a simple uploaded photo, crowd sourcing can then help identify the organism and the observation is recorded so that worldwide any researchers can data mine the info they need. You never know what piece of data you could be providing some researcher somewhere in the world. Here’s a link to various tutorials on how to use the free app: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/video+tutorials.  

Bioblitzes and similar citizen science events such as the City Nature Challenge offer a lot of interpretive opportunities. To begin with, different teams and their leaders can serve as natural history walks and short programs. Indeed, by getting well-known experts and naturalists to lead groups, you can attract a nice group of interested people, some of which you may discover have great skill or knowledge in certain areas and thus might be recruited
as potential long term volunteers.

The central meeting location which many bioblitzes use can also be places for environmental groups to man booths, activity tables, conduct short presentations, games, and distribute information. Some activities can be geared for younger audiences and the novice or general audience who may just want to see some potential program or show. But the area can also serve to show people unique activities or to have unusual specimens brought back for ID and to show others. Indeed, having people bring back invertebrates for an expert to ID can prove to provide neat discoveries for the public to make. If you stagger teams and activities, people may show up interested in one thing, but be introduced into others they may not have thought they were interested in but are willing to try out. Many people my want to take advantage of an opportunity to be part of expert teams and learn from them in the field. Take for example this short look at a fungi ID team during a bioblitz and the process they used which fascinated many people who had no idea about this wonderful group of organisms. Many expressed interest in learning more about these organisms and were fascinated by the myriad of fungi they were introduced to in their local parks.

These type of biotic survey events can also offer great networking and public relations possibilities. Staff from neighboring jurisdictions and environmental groups have often assisted and provided their expertise for events. I myself have also assisted many other jurisdictions and groups in their bioblitzes, City Nature Challenge, or other events. This allows for good networking opportunities, sharing of knowledge, good will, and unofficially “talking shop.” Media often take great interest in these of public events, as shown in the Voice of America video linked above and much coverage of ongoing citizen science events. 

So citizen science special events have great potential as interpretive and media events. They are rewarding to participants while providing potential data for researchers.  The next big opportunity, and it is repeated yearly, is the global City Nature Challenge April 26-29, 2019. So mark your calendars and give it a shot, either personally, as part of one of the many planned events, or perhaps to run an event yourself. More information can be found here: http://citynaturechallenge.org/ though there are many cities with their own individual websites as (here’s the Washington, DC one I’m taking part in again for example: https://citynaturechallengedc.org/) Your own interpretive moments may help to provide valuable data to researchers while helping you and the public discover the wonders of the natural world all around their parks. 

For our 2019 recertification pin, we decided on the species (the American Chestnut), and then we invited all VMN volunteers to submit photos and artwork representing that species.  We were completely overwhelmed by the fabulous response!  We have extremely talented volunteers.  In the end, we asked seven individuals in the Virginia Department of Forestry (folks who know both our program and chestnuts well)  to serve as our judges.  We are excited to not only share the winning artwork by Linda Duncan in our Old Rag Chapter (featured above), but also all of the submissions (below).  We think this collection is such an amazing and diverse representation of this iconic species that we are looking for other ways to feature it, with the artists’ permission.

Click on any image in the gallery to enlarge it and to see the name of the artist.

Bob Toner completed and reported 1,158 hours of Virginia Master Naturalist volunteer time in 2017.  That is about 22 hours a week!  In 2017, his numerous activities included collecting data for many citizen science bird surveys, giving educational tours at a National Wildlife Refuge, maintaining trails at a Nature Conservancy preserve, and working with other VMN volunteers to conduct an urban tree inventory in their town.

Our chapters vary greatly in size, so we scale the hours based on the total number of volunteers in the chapter who reported service hours that year.  The chapter winning the award for their 2017 work this year is one of our larger chapters, with 126 active members in 2017.  On average, those volunteers each contributed 137 hours of service during the year.  Some of the projects they did included collecting, cleaning, and hauling oyster shells for restoration projects with VIMS, leading environmental education programs for DOF at the New Kent Forestry Center, and conducting butterfly counts at National Park Service sites. They also put on a great basic training course and graduated a bunch of new volunteers! Congratulations to the Historic Rivers Chapter!
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For the Volunteer of the Year, we received 7 nominations of volunteers from 7 different chapters.  Every single one of these people, as well as many who weren’t nominated, is truly a Volunteer of the Year.  The service of these volunteers and the impacts they make through natural resource education, stewardship, and citizen science in their communities is truly inspiring.  

The award for Volunteer of the Year goes to a volunteer who has volunteered as a VMN with many different partner organizations, including the Virginia Aquarium, Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge, First Landing State Park, and others.  Over the years she has held several leadership positions within the chapter including president, and actively participated on the board of directors, most recently as the co-chairperson of our Junior Master Naturalist Program which she helped build.  She is described as someone who is always looking for ways to share her love of the environment and to get people learning about the natural world, whether they are pre-schoolers or adults.  Congratulations, Jody, and thank you for your service!   

Nearly all of our chapters do some sort of bluebird box monitoring, but the Historic Rivers Chapter has taken it to a new level!  Three-quarters of their members participate in the project (that’s 98 people!), monitoring nestboxes on 18 different trails.  What is particularly noteworthy is how the chapter has grown the effort from just 12 nestboxes in 2010 to more than 300 today.  They have organized workshops to improve the predator protections on the boxes, conducted mini-research projects to test strategies for reducing house sparrow use of the boxes, and have incorporated educational opportunities for youth into schoolyard sites.

Don’t chuck that shuck!  At least five of our VMN chapters have been working hard on the Virginia Oyster Shell Recycling project, a program of the Virginia Commonwealth University Rice Rivers Center  Riverine, Rivanna, Peninsula, Historic Rivers, and Pocahontas are all involved.  In this project, volunteers collect oyster shells regularly from local restaurants and grocery stores and bring them to a common drop-off site.  Additional volunteers assist with bagging the shells and spreading them on sanctuary reefs in the Chesapeake Bay and surrounding rivers.  Volunteers also work at various oyster events, staffing information booths and collecting shells from participants.  In total, more than 37 tons of shell have been collected, creating a home for more than 5 million oyster spat that were added to the sanctuary reefs.  The award really recognizes the whole project and all of the volunteers who have contributed, but we asked the Riverine Chapter to accept the award.  They were the first chapter to participate, service the most restaurants and grocery stores for the project, and collect the greatest volume of shell.

Not many volunteers become Virginia Master Naturalists because they want to spend time on organizing their local chapter, but Chapter Administration is a critical category of volunteering on which our program depends!  This year’s Administrative Project of the Year award recognizes a chapter that re-organized their project list to make it easier for new members to understand and use.  The work involved retired dozens of outdated projects, merging duplicative projects, and creating new projects to reflect current needs.  We especially recognize volunteer John Narney, who led the effort.