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Recovering Landscapes for Natural Resilience
Recovering Landscapes for Natural Resilience
By John E. Ross
Those broad fields of bright native wildflowers that so delighted us in May are readying for fall. Within their tiny husks, seeds are drying. Indiangrass and blue stem have gone to seed. Beneath their matted stems thrive vast communities of voles and field mice making shelter for winter to come.
Orange County Hounds Conservation Foundation (OCHCF) and the Smithsonian’s Virginia Working Landscapes (VWL) offer seminars, nature walks, and safaris demonstrating how each of us can return the terrain we occupy to a more natural state. As a result, native species, both plant and animal, are returning to the northern Piedmont, a sure sign of recovery and resilience.
The OCHCF recently hosted its second annual Spring Safari. It began with a Friday evening seminar and reception hosted by Jacqueline Mars in her Meredyth Pavilion. The next morning, sixty-five participants toured natural habitats at Mike and Jeanne Morency’s Broad Hollow Farm south of Middleburg.
Rae Stone, OCHCF president, opened the seminar and introduced Amy Johnson, VWL program director and scientist with the Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal. She, in turn, introduced four panelists, who have partnered with OCHCF and VWL to ensure that native birds, trees, grasses, flowers, and even turtles and toads thrive in sustainable habitats.
Properties ranged in size from Sue Puleo and Bob Butcher’s 10-acre Faire Meddow, hidden in the forest southeast of Markham, to Beatrice and Adie von Gontard’s 1,400-acre Oxbow Farm along the west bank of the Shenandoah River. They have planted 100 acres in warm season grasses and wildflowers as natural habitats for bees, birds, and butterflies.
The other panelists were Landon Butler of 485-acre Gap Run Farm near Rectortown, and Brian Gratwicke who has twelve acres outside of Sperryville and has created vernal ponds as habitats for frogs and salamanders. Brian also leads amphibian conservation initiatives at the Smithsonian’s institute in Front Royal.
“It doesn’t matter how big or small one’s property is. Everyone can make a difference,” Beatrice said. “If we want to promote biodiversity of native species, we need to plant native grasses, wildflowers, shrubs and trees.”
The way to begin, Landon added, is to let the land tell you what to do. He and his wife, Carol, devoted more than a year to learning their farm’s terrain, often on horseback, before deciding where to build their house. Rather than landowners per se, they see themselves as stewards of their acreage.
Among signature projects on Gap Run Farm are the re-establishment of white oak forest and an emerging plan for a public walking and horse nature trail along the creek.
Sue Puleo of Faire Meddow comes to her commitment to native species naturally. She was raised in a family known for its mobile organic produce market in Leesburg.
Faire Meddow is, as it sounds, a heavenly garden hidden in the woods. Everywhere one looks, whether along the gravel drive or behind Bob’s workshop, spread gardens of wildflowers and native shrubs.
Wildflowers attract birds that consume thousands of caterpillars and other insects to sustain their high metabolisms and nourish their young. In a bird survey at Faire Meddow, VWL identified 42 species from Acadian Flycatchers to Yellowthroated Vireos. In addition, VWL conducted a thorough biodiversity inventory.
Following the Friday night seminar, the safari reconvened at Broad Hollow Farm. Participants divided themselves into three groups: some rode horseback, some walked, and some slightly hobbled rode ATVs.
Highlighting the tour was the avian banding station. There, Brian Evans and Amy Scarpignato, ecologists with the Smithsonian’s Migratory Bird Center, demonstrated techniques for monitoring song bird populations and migration. To capture birds, a large, dark, fine mesh net is strung between two tall poles. Birds fly into the net. Untangled and unharmed, their species, weight, and estimate age are logged. A numbered aluminum band is clipped to one leg, and they’re released.
Distances flown by migrating song birds is incredible. Bobolinks travel about 10,000 miles round trip from the Virginia Piedmont to Argentina and back to the “very same place where they were hatched to mate, nest and fledge their own young,” Beatrice said.
After visiting Broad Hollow, Gap Run, and Faire Meddow and interviewing Beatrice of Oxbow Farm, there is little doubt that VWL under Amy Johnson’ s leadership and OCHCF with Rae Stone holding the reins are bringing recovery and resilience to landscapes of the northern piedmont.
OCHCF’s Spring Safaris and Fall Trail Rides provide excellent opportunities for landowners and tenants, no matter what size parcel they occupy, to adapt tracts as small as backyard gardens to attract native birds with wildflowers and stands of wild grasses.
For information about upcoming OCHCF and VWL events, visit https://ochcf.org/ and https://www.vaworkinglandscapes.org/.
