Back to Basics: Exploring some of Southeastern Virginia's Last Wild Places

What a journey this has been! I started grad school way back in 2019 when I worked in the nuclear industry. I was concerned about losing my job, as the future of nuclear power has been up in the air for some time now. I wanted to stay in the energy industry, and an Masters in Natural Resources seemed like the best option if I wanted to explore careers in renewables. However, in 2021, my career path took a sharp turn away from nuclear, and I became a field service engineer for Thermofisher Scientific. Thermo was kind enough to provide me funding to finish my degree, but my path seems less clear now. I wonder where the teachings of this Master's program and my current trajectory will cross paths, as I'm sure they will. Biodiversity Stewardship turned out to be one of my favorite classes, which was unexpected. I learned about a lot of different tools that I would likely never have discovered on my own. My favorite was by far Google Maps; it provided me the versatility to present B

photo credit: https://bbnwrs.org/ The Back Bay NWR Society is a 501(c)(3), which is the general organization for most nonprofit groups. For my penultimate assignment for my Biodiversity Stewardship class, I was asked to detail the process for forming a nonprofit in my state, in this case Virginia. However, before I get into the process, I wanted to share some insights from my interview with Richard Dyer, the former president of the Back Bay NWR Society. We had a long phone conversation over the weekend; he was interviewing me for a Society Member Spotlight in the Back Bay monthly newsletter.  We chatted about a wide variety of subjects, but I wanted to know what it was like forming a Friends Society in Virginia. He told me that the process involves a lot of paperwork, planning, meetings, and a significant amount of personal investment. He estimated that he spent hundreds of hours working toward founding the Society, starting in 2018. He worked diligently for two years going through the

Taxonomy can be a rather dry subject, but it's important to categorize the denizens of the world around us, if only for sanity's sake. The live oak groves and hammocks of Back Bay and False Cape are as distinctive as they are crucial for the ecology of the area. I am quite partial to the live oak, if you couldn't tell by my previous entries. However, I'm not here to once again wax poetic about this particular tree species. On the contrary, I want to zoom out a little bit and focus on the family Fagacae. Fagaceae, commonly known as the beech family, encompasses species of oaks, beeches, and chestnuts (RIP, American Chestnut). While on the surface these trees may not seem to have anything in common, they share some unique traits. Fagaceae Common Traits Species grow in temperate climates in the Northern Hemisphere and Southeast Asia  All members of approximately 10 genera are believed to share a common ancestor   Consists of two subfamilies, Fagoideae (oaks and beeches) an