Category: Uncategorized

For Immediate Release – May 9, 2019
For more information, contact Caroline Brewer, caroline.brewer@anshome.org or 301-652-9188, ext. 23 or Eliza Cava, Eliza.cava@anshome.org, or 301-652-9188, ext. 22

CHEVY CHASE, MD – Georgetown University has signed a contract with Origis Energy to build a solar energy farm on 240 acres of pristine forest habitat, home to several endangered species of birds and aquatic life, that covers part of the ancestral homeland of the Piscataways.

The Audubon Naturalist Society will testify against Georgetown’s plan at the Maryland Department of Environment's Wetlands Permit Public Hearing and in favor of saving this precious natural resource, which helps us fight climate change.

WHEN: Monday, May 13 from 6 pm -10:30 pm

WHERE: Charles County Commissioners Meeting Room, 200 Baltimore Street, La Plata, MD 20646

WHY: We don’t have to choose between solar energy and life-harboring and life-saving forests

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For Immediate Release: April 3, 2019
For more information, contact Caroline Brewer, caroline.brewer@anshome.org or 301-652-9188, ext. 23 or lglisagoodnight@gmail.com or 301-523-5394, or ben.israel@anshome.org or 202-683-0994

CHEVY CHASE, MD – The Audubon Naturalist Society is proud to announce the April 25, 2019 premiere of The Land of Woodend, which covers Native American, African American, European American, and Latino American experiences on the 40-acre property that’s been home to ANS for 50 years and is the focus of its new Nature for All movement.

The Land of Woodend explores 400 years of history, mystery, beauty, blight, restoration and transformation on this diverse urban nature sanctuary. It reveals how the nature education, advocacy, and conservation organization is renewing habitats and strengthening ties to nature with communities in the DC region through a remarkable restoration effort that includes a forest, stream, pond, meadows, native plants, an accessible trail, mansion upgrades, and more.

The Land of Woodend showtimes are 2 – 3:30 pm (Matinee) and 7 -8:30 pm (a special Conservation Café presentation). Tickets are $15 and can be purchased here.  The hourlong documentary was produced with the help of a grant from Heritage Montgomery and produced and directed by ANS’s Staff Videographer Ben Israel.

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For Immediate Release – March 22, 2019

For more information, contact caroline.brewer@anshome.org , 301-652-9188 x 23, lglisagoodnight@gmail.com, 301-523-5394, serenella.linares@anshome.org, 202-489-8780 or eliza.cava@anshome.org, 202-503-9141.

CHEVY CHASE, MD – On Wednesday, March 27^th, 2019, Audubon Naturalist Society and partners will host the second Naturally Latinos Conference. More than 20 speakers, eight environmental champions, and at least two dozen sponsors will discuss “resilience and recovery” in the Latinx environmental community. Lead speakers include Ada Monzón, WIPR-TV meteorologist and founder and president of the EcoExploratorio: Science Museum in Puerto Rico; Chris Espinosa, Director of Public Engagement for the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources; and Mark Magaña, Founding President and CEO of GreenLatinos.

From the hyper-local to the national, speakers and attendees will share stories and lessons learned on surviving and recovering from natural disasters like Hurricanes Irma and Maria, shepherding the most significant national public lands bill in a decade, connecting traditional environmental organizations with local Latinx communities, and empowering Hispanic environmental professionals and volunteers to strengthen their careers through leadership opportunities. Attendees will get hands-on training in a community forest learning tool newly translated into Spanish and see how a local health department is weaving nature into public health promotion.

Monzon is the first woman in Puerto Rico to be named a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS). During her morning keynote address at the Naturally Latinos Conference, Monzón will paint the picture of the devastation she witnessed while covering 2017’s devastating hurricanes in Puerto Rico and how she believes educating Latino children will be key to recovery for the island and the earth. “We cannot think this is only happening in Puerto Rico. We are all going to be affected. We need to use science as a tool to empower students to become problem solvers.”

Learn more, and view the full agenda and photos and video from the first Naturally Latinos Conference in 2017 at www.anshome.org/naturally-latinos-2019.

Conference planning partners include: Choose Clean Water Coalition, Corazon Latino, Maryland Association for Environmental & Outdoor Education, NOAA National Weather Service, Prince George’s County Parks & Recreation, and the US Forest Service.

Lead Sponsors include Prince George’s County Parks & Recreation, Montgomery County Parks, Chesapeake Bay Trust, and Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

For Immediate Release – March 11, 2019

For more information, contact caroline.brewer@anshome.org or 301-652-9188 x 23 or Alison Pearce, alison.pearce@anshome.org, 301-652-9188 x 30

CHEVY CHASE, MD – The dramatic decline in insects – including butterflies and bees - has turned into what scientists are now calling an “insect apocalypse.” The Audubon Naturalist Society on Wednesday, March 13, will convene some of the region’s top meadow and grasslands thinkers to share best practices for establishing and maintaining meadows, which is an important way to help support a healthy insect community – one that benefits wildlife and people.

Topics such as Native Plant Establishment and Maintenance, Bringing Meadows Home, and Native Plants for Meadow Restoration will provide powerful and fundamental ideas that will help turn ordinary people into extraordinary activists for a better environment.

“Meadows support abundant and diverse insects, from pollinators to leaf herbivores (some species do both – leaf-eating caterpillars that change into nectar-eating butterfly pollinators). Many insects form specific relationships with specific native plants. They can’t use just any flower we plant in our yards, such as impatiens (which are from Asia). Ever notice that impatiens plants remain perfect with no holes in the leaves? That’s because no one is eating them. Which means they are not supporting the food web,” explained Alison Pearce, Director of Restoration at ANS and Ph.D in Ecological Anthropology. “Native plants grow insects and insects grow nearly everything else directly or indirectly.”

The summit comes as ANS nudges its own beautiful mix of meadows, forest, and streams back to better health under the Woodend Restoration Project. Over the next five years, ANS will minimize the presence of invasive species and maximize the presence of native species at Woodend Nature Sanctuary. This meadows component of the Restoration Project will result in a more abundant and diverse insect community, which in turn will feed birds and amphibians… and on up the food web. The plight of insects has gotten a lot of attention thanks, in part, to a 2018 New York Times magazine article “The Insect Apocalypse is Here.” The Washington Post just last week also published “Butterflies Aren’t Expendable. Our Brittle Reality Depends on Them, Too” by Paleontologist and Entomologist Michael Engle of the University of Kansas.

In addition to Pearce, the Meadow Summit speakers are Andi Pupke, Chesapeake Wildlife Heritage; Sara Tangren, Ph.D; University of Maryland Extension, Home and Garden Information Center; Rochelle Bartolomei, Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission; Damien Ossi, District of Columbia’s Department of the Environment); and Jorge Bogantes-Montero, Natural Resource Specialist with the Anacostia Watershed Society. The summit runs from 10 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

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For Immediate Release – January 9, 2019

For more information, contact caroline.brewer@anshome.org or 301-652-9188, ext. 23, or Eliza Cava eliza.cava@anshome.org, 301-652-9188, ext. 22

CHEVY CHASE, MD – The Audubon Naturalist Society will provide testimony on issues of environmental concern in Northern Virginia during tonight’s annual hearing.

WHO/WHAT:  Eliza Cava, ANS's Director of Conservation, will testify before the Fairfax County Environmental Quality Advisory Council (EQAC), a group appointed by the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors to advise the Board on environmental matters. Her remarks will cover AmazonHQ2, Dogue Creek and other ANS policy priorities. Cava’s full testimony will be posted on the ANS Conservation Blog by 5 p.m.

WHEN/WHERE:  Tonight (Wednesday) January 9, 2019 starting at 7:30 p.m. in Conference Rooms 4 and 5 of the Fairfax County Government Center, 12000 Government Center Parkway, Fairfax, VA.

CHEVY CHASE, MD – The Audubon Naturalist Society (ANS) today released its new report from the Conservation Department on the health of streams in our nation’s capital and it contains some good, bad, and, ugly news.
Titled Stream Health at Select Tributaries in Rock Creek in Washington, DC, the report, which covers nine years of monitoring at three Northwest DC neighborhood streams, found an abundance of aquatic life, from mayflies to salamanders, and even eels (which were an essential food source for Native American communities in our region and are now very rare). That’s the good.

But the report, authored by Water Quality Monitoring Program Coordinator Cathy Wiss, also found that health in all streams has declined to a “poor” state. Two of the three streams have stable communities of aquatic organisms, with one showing improvement over time. The third has declined in biological health, and all have lost diversity and numbers of aquatic organisms due to polluted runoff and leaks from underlying sanitary sewage pipes. The report’s conclusions are based on the data and observations supplied by the volunteers of ANS’s Water Quality Monitoring Program, one of the nation’s longest-running community science programs.

Jeanne Braha, Executive Director of Rock Creek Conservancy, said, “This sort of rich, long-term data is so helpful to identifying issues and priority areas as we work to restore Rock Creek and its parklands. We appreciate ANS’s partnership and the great work they do to help us better understand the Creek.”

Eliza Cava, Director of Conservation at ANS, said, “D.C. residents know and love Rock Creek Park. Yet this report helps make clear that the park and its streams are also home to small kingdoms of plants and animals that, literally, are our bffs – bffs with powers like the ability to clean waste, enrich soil, and warn us of dangers. Our friends do their magical work in the sunshine and darkness, hidden from the hurried and unaware among us. One way to express proper gratitude is to ensure that they can grow healthier and more abundant.”

ANS’s three monitoring sites include: (1) Pinehurst Branch, just upstream of Beach Drive NW (2) Melvin Haven Run in North Cleveland Park and (3) Normanstone Run at Normanstone Drive and 30th Street, NW. The monitoring teams visit the sites three to four times a year.

The Stream Health report concludes with four major recommendations to DC and federal government officials: (1) Monitor water quality more often (2) Add to the D.C. “species of greatest concern” list insects and other aquatic organisms that are becoming rare (3) Look for sources of polluted discharges into these streams (4) Manage stream restoration projects to prevent oils and road salt from getting into the streams.

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Preschoolers will Later Dismantle and Dispose of Monsters on Halloween

A Conservation Blog Supporting DC’s Plastic Straw Ban and What We Can Do to Combat Single Use Plastics Debuts October 30

For Immediate Release – Monday, October 29, 2018

For more information, contact Caroline Brewer, Director of Marketing and Communications, carolinebrewer@anshome.org or 301-652-9188, ext. 23, or Lisa Goodnight, lglisagoodnight@gmail.com or 301-523-5394.

CHEVY CHASE, MD – It’s not the ghosts or goblins that should have us shaking in our boots. Rather, it’s the prediction that our oceans will have more plastic waste than fish in a few short decades if we don’t change. To raise awareness of problems created by too much plastic in the environment, the Audubon Naturalist Society’s environmental education team designed a project with students from three Montgomery County elementary schools to create “monsters” out of plastic to illustrate the major threat to our ecosystem.

The monsters will be exhibited at the ANS Woodend Sanctuary, starting at 9 a.m. Halloween morning, October 31. (Please use the 9002 Brierly Road entrance, due to construction work.) At 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., ANS pre-school students will roam the nature sanctuary to capture, and ultimately, dispose of the approximately 20 creepy creatures.

The creatures were made by third, fourth and fifth graders from Captain James E. Daly Jr., Rolling Terrace, and Summit Hall Elementary Schools in Montgomery County through the ANS-led Unplug and Play afterschool program.  The environmental clubs, which are financially supported by the Montgomery County Council, meet every Wednesday until November 14 and have 48 students.

“The students were amazed at the sheer amount of trash – about 10-15 pounds of plastic bottles and containers – they were able to collect from near their schools and along a stream in just 45 minutes,’ said Diane Lill, Director of Environmental Education.” And they asked important questions about our plastic pollution problem.  It’s more evidence that environmental education that engages children with a hands-on project around issues happening in real time is a great way for young people to see how relevant science is to their lives. We’re proud of our Unplug and Play students for helping bring more awareness of the problems of plastic to people of all ages, and to our youngest learners.”

ANS’s Director of Conservation Eliza Cava has written a blog that will debut Tuesday, October 30, in support of D.C. City Council’s proposed ban on plastic straws. The blog, which will be found at this link, includes suggestions about what area residents can do to ward off environmental harm created by plastic waste.

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