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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

Land protection is the bread and butter of our business, but our passion is connecting people with our work. It puts a smile on our face to say a property is protected forever, and the cherry on top is when that protection fulfills the landowner's hopes and dreams. The stories we hear from landowners move us and inspire us to work harder, for the land and the people that live on it. In Nokesville, Virginia, two neighbors learned that love for the land runs thicker than blood.

Welcome, Mark Scott, to the NVCT board! Mark is a risk management specialist with a background in leadership positions at environmental nonprofits. Mark has lived in various places in the U.S and has dealt with all manner of hazards and natural disasters. Now that he has settled in Northern Virginia, he is ready for his next challenge. His current assessment is that one of the biggest risks Northern Virginia faces is not prioritizing our greatest defense against a changing cl

How does our work benefit Northern Virginians? While the answers may seem obvious to us, we wanted to understand whether people in our service area recognize those benefits and how important they are to them. To find out, NVCT created a community survey to gather insights about residents' perspectives on land conservation and their relationship with nearby green spaces. We also collected demographic information to better understand who we are reaching and engaging through our

It’s the hottest time of the year again here in Virginia, and many of us are wishing for a cool dip in the pool after walking from our hot car to the front door of our workplace. The most recent high was 96 degrees Fahrenheit, and it often feels like it can only get hotter from here on out. But, lucky for Northern Virginians, NVCT and our partners’ work is helping build a cooler future every day. In the most recent installation of our Nearby Nature Network webinar series, Cas

Meet our newest team member, Abby Knipp! Abby is our administrative and membership manager. This is a new role at NVCT that will help steward NVCT supporters while ensuring there’s always a friendly face at our front desk! 1. Did you grow up in Northern Virginia? “I grew up in Northern Maryland, in Northern Baltimore County. My family has a remote farm surrounded by 10 acres of land” Abby grew up surrounded by nature, but had never imagined working at an environmental org