Volunteering with Wild Virginia

June 13, 2021

This month, June 2021, I began volunteering with Wild Virginia which is a non-profit organization located here in Virginia. As a volunteer with Wild Virginia, I currently serve as a member of their communications team. I look forward to helping Wild Virginia to spread the word about their conservation work in Virginia and am hoping to make a difference by helping to advocate and protect our wild places in Virginia.

What is Wild Virginia

Wild Virginia is an organization that works to preserve forest ecosystems by enhancing connectivity, water & climate in Virginia. They also work to improve habitat connectivity, to educate and to provide opportunities to have adventure outings so that individuals will get to know, love and appreciate the wild places here in Virginia.

What Wild Virginia Does

This below excerpt is taken from Wild Virginia’s website. I wanted to spread the word about the missions of Wild Virginia and what this organization does to protect our water and land.

• Wild Virginia educates citizens, landowners, and other stakeholders about threats to our forests through hikes, outings and events.

• Wild Virginia advocates for the connectivity and integrity of Virginia’s forests and waters

• Wild Virginia influences decision makers by mobilizing citizens

• Wild Virginia protects Virginia’s water quality and ensures the that the laws that exist to protect it are properly applied. They also host trainings so you can learn to help monitor water quality.

• Wild Virginia fights fracking and other types of oil and gas infrastructure, like the Mountain Valley Pipeline. They also take citizens, media, students and elected representatives on tours to see first-hand the impacts of this destructive industry.

• Wild Virginia organizes and leads interpretive hikes, outings, and events. They believe that the places you experience are the places you come to love and care about.

• Wild Virginia monitors all timber sales and projects in the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests.

• Wild Virginia organizes the Virginia Safe Wildlife Corridor Collaborative working to protect both people and wildlife by reducing animal-vehicle conflicts and improving safe wildlife passage. They also help pass legislation to identify and protect wildlife corridors in our Virginia.

• Wild Virginia inspires action through their Wild Virginia Film Festival and other film screenings each year.

• Wild Virginia provides a place for volunteers to help out and learn more through their volunteer program.

Volunteering with Wild Virginia

As a conservation visual storyteller and photographer, I look forward to my volunteer work with Wild Virginia. Being able to be a part of an organization that works to protect, advocate, and educate for Virginia’s wild places to help make our lands and waters safer for all Virginia citizens is a very important to me as an individual and as a conservation photographer.

I enjoy photographing in these wild places in Virginia and want to ensure that these places continue to exist for future wildlife and nature photographers as well as for folks who just enjoy being out in nature.

I urge Virginians to check out Wild Virginia and to help support their efforts to protect these wonderful Virginia places that we all love to see and to explore.

As my volunteer work with Wild Virginia continues to evolve, stay tuned, as I will share more about my experiences and conservation efforts with Wild Virginia in my future Field Notes blog posts.

Thank you for reading my Field Notes blog, and I hope you will share this post with others.

Let’s protect our wildlife and nature!

All the very best,

Lori

https://linktr.ee/LoriACash

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