2024 Virginia Master Naturalist State Conference

 

Four chapter members attended the 2023 Virginia Master Naturalist State Conference from Sept 29th to Oct 1^st.  This year, the conference was held in the Blue Ridge Mountains in the town of Abingdon and was attended by 180 naturalists from across the state.

Photo by Regina Flora: Entrance to conference venue

Conference attendees: Regina, Kathy, Stephanie and Ed

Ed and Kathy arrived on Thursday to visit some of Virginia’s State Parks in the area.  Ed visited Natural Tunnel State Park in Scott County.  At more than 850 feet long and 10 stories high, Natural Tunnel began to form more than one million years ago as water slowly dissolved limestone and dolomite bedrock to naturally carve this enormous cave.   Kathy visited the new Clinch River State Park in Wise County. The park currently contains the pre-existing Sugar Hill Loop hiking trail.  DCR is acquiring more property in the area to build a 100 mile long Blueway along the Clinch River.  We have a Blueway here on Philpott Lake.

Photo by Ed Coleman: Natural Tunnel State Park

Pre-conference field trips were on Friday.  Ed hiked about six miles round trip with a group of 20 Master Naturalists through a high-elevation forest to the Channels.  Formed 400 million years ago from an ancient sea floor, the geological formations of the Channels are comprised of a network of deep sandstone crevices.  The channels may have been created by permafrost and ice wedging during the last ice age, which split large seams in the soft rock.  

Photo by Ed Coleman: The Channels

Kathy visited the DCR Aquatic Wildlife Conservation Center where she learned much about mussels.  This facility is doing captive breeding of endangered species of mussels from the area, including the rarest mussel in the world: the Appalachian monkeyface mussel.  The tour began with a video of a momma mussel, waving a body part to attract a fish.  When the fish came close, she grabbed it by the nose.  For 10 minutes, she spit microscopic larvae at the fish before releasing it.  The immature mussels, called glochidia, attach to the fish gills and feed off the fish until they are mature enough to drop off and fend for themselves.  The facility includes spaces for male and female mussels to live and breed, microscopes to find the glochidia, and space to raise the specific species of host fish for each of the different species of mussels.  Eyedroppers are used to collect the glochidia and spray them on an unwitting fish in a private tank. We even got to see all the fish food and mussel food they had on hand. This was all more interesting than I had imagined it would be.  There is an interesting article about breeding the monkeyface mussel here. 

Friday, Regina did some bird watching and visited Shot Tower State Park and New River Trail State Park, bringing her total for Trail Quest to 19 of Virginia’s State Parks.  Then she set up the chapter display for the Friday evening Share Fair.  Our display table focused on the education outreach project about Spotted Lanternfly.

Regina at our Outreach table

Saturday morning was spent inside the Higher Education Center in Abingdon. The keynote speaker, Jeremy Stout, gave a fascinating presentation on the prehistory and ecology of the southern Appalachian Mountains.  

All 4 of SWP members attended “Living with Black Bears in Virginia”.  This talk described a new joint project with the Department of Wildlife Resources to educate the public about interactions with bears. This project has recently been approved for our chapter as our outreach focus for 2024.  The timing of this educational session was helpful for Ed, who had a recent face-to-face encounter with a black bear. After the session ended, he sat down with Carl Tugend, Black Bear Project Leader DWR, for a personal assessment of his particular bear situation.  

Photo by Regina Flora

Saturday afternoon, Ed and Kathy traveled by bus to the Blue Ridge Discovery Center where Ali Reilly, Program Coordinator, took us on a tour of the historic Blue Ridge Discovery Center building, which was originally sided with American Chestnut bark.  We explored the 6,000 square-foot native plant rain garden in front of the building, then headed to the wetland restoration project on the Blue Ridge Discovery campus. The wetland had previously been filled in and turned into a trailer park.  The diversity of species we found in and around this restored area was amazing.   Regina went on this same field trip at a different time.

Photo by Regina Flora: Wetland Restoration site

On Sunday morning, Regina attended the Presidents breakfast, where attendees participated in group sessions to discuss any chapter issues and problem-solving suggestions.  Then, she attended a field trip on Edible plants at Hungry Mother State Park, adding a 20^th park to her tally.

Photo by Regina Flora: Hungry Mother Lake at Hungry Mother State Park

Ed drove to Saltville to view shorebirds with Katie Cordle.  Situated on a 86-acre park in the center of town, the Saltville Well Fields are a series of brackish wetlands caused by salt leakage from old brine wells.  The site, which is the only inland saline marsh in Virginia, is located geographically along a spring and fall migration route for shorebirds and waterfowl.  

Photo by Ed Coleman: Saltville Well Fields

Kathy attended a session by a wildlife rehabilitator and an update by Kate LeCroy on her research on our native blue mason bees.  Master Naturalists across the state participated in her PhD research.  She has determined that bee hotels attract mostly the non-native mason bees and bee predators.  Bee hotels are also spreading the chalk brood fungus that is killing our native mason bees. The non-native bees appear to be less affected by this fungus. 

We all headed home on Sunday afternoon, appreciative of the many educational experiences enjoyed during the conference and looking forward to the 2024 conference.   The 2024 Virginia Master Naturalist conference will be a virtual event held September 27-29.  We are discussing the possibility of scheduling some field trips and get-togethers with the three other chapters in the southern piedmont.