Once any of us becomes aware of the threat to our community’s trees from invasive vines, walking through our own neighborhoods can be a little frustrating. What if you could help those trees in a friendly, neighborly way?

The Northern Virginia Bird Alliance (NVBA, formerly Audubon Society of Northern Virginia) has been associated with Occoquan Bay for over 30 years, conducting regular bird, insect, and plant surveys on the Refuge grounds and providing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) staff with valuable data for making decisions about Refuge management. 

Stretch Our Parks is both a conservation and a social initiative, aimed at improving and creating wildlife habitat while building a greater commitment by a broader northern Virginia community in saving wildlife.

Mary Frase, who comes from several generations of family gardeners, tells anyone who asks her about her volunteering, “I grew up playing in the dirt and I still like to play there.” She turned this love into an extraordinary commitment to native habitat.

If you haven’t yet taken the time to study the variety of nature in your local park, but you still appreciate it, you may also ask yourself how you, as a park user and community member can help protect the park’s resources.

As part of Stretch Our Parks, volunteers worked with the Four Mile Run Conservancy Foundation to install a Purple Martin colony at the end of February in Alexandria’s Four Mile Run Park.

On the Sunday before Thanksgiving more than 30 volunteers came together for a service project at Monticello Park in Alexandria.

Hope is winning out, even as I hear chainsaws and backhoes signal the demolition of yet another neighborhood house and all of its majestic oaks. I block out those sounds of destruction by recalling four hopeful ASNV sessions from the past few weeks.

Starting in 2020, I worked with volunteers to move some of the native plant bounty from my yard into Upton Hill Regional Park, in Arlington. What started as an isolated project has evolved into one element of a larger ASNV program, Stretch Our Parks.

I am excited to announce a new ASNV program called Stretch Our Parks. It is a community-based conservation initiative, centered around northern Virginia parks, to be implemented via partnerships among ASNV, parks, conservation groups, and neighborhood and community groups.

The 2022 State of the Birds report gives us concern but also provides some basis for hope for the future.