Today, more than eighty percent of the world’s population can no longer see the Milky Way at night due to the glow of artificial light emanating from manmade structures. Even more concerning is that light pollution is growing at an estimated ten percent each year.  The good news is that light pollution is one of the most combatable forms of pollution.   We all can use turn off lights, use responsible lighting and help to educate others about the effects of artificial light at night.  
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The December 12th Old Rag membership meeting will feature a panel discussion featuring the problem of light pollution.  Dark sky advocates: Tom Reinert, Torney Van Acker, and Joyce Harman will examine the unintended negative impacts of artificial light at night on wildlife, humans, and the night sky, as well as strategies to promote responsible outdoor lighting.

Torney Van Acker is a retired electrical engineer and capital projects development manager who has owned farm property in Rappahannock county since 2002, becoming a full-time resident in 2016.  Torney grew up on a dairy farm in northwest New Jersey, an area that closely resembles Rappahannock County.  His passions are organic farming and gardening, sustainable land use, hiking, running and dark skies preservation.

Torney lives in Castleton, Virginia with his wife Sylvie of 44 years in a custom-built home that they designed.  They are blessed with three adult married children and two grandchildren, whom they see often. 

Torney currently serves on the Board of the Rappahannock League for Environmental Protection (RLEP) and until 2021, served on the Board of the Rappahannock County Recreational Facilities Authority (RCRFA) managing the Rappahannock County Park.  On behalf of the RCRFA, he obtained a Dark Sky Park designation for the County Park from the International Dark-Sky Association (now known as DarkSky International).  It was the third park in Virginia and the third county park in the US to be so designated.  

As an RLEP Board member, Torney launched and managed a free outdoor lighting replacement program for county residents that replaces old lighting fixtures with newer energy-efficient dark sky friendly models. Over 250 lights have been replaced since 2018.  
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Joyce Harman was born and raised in Washington D.C., but her time was always spent in the country riding horses. She became a veterinarian in 1984, then worked in England and Ireland for a few years before coming back to the states. Currently, Joyce is retired from active veterinary practice and lives in Flint Hill, VA.
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Joyce grew up in a darkroom and her camera has never been far from her side in all her travels. She is a founding member of the Old Rag Photography Gallery, a cooperative in Rappahannock county, VA. She also exhibits with Middle Street Gallery in Washington, VA.

Joyce is president of the Manassas-Warrenton Camera Club and lectures to photography groups on various topics. She teaches photography classes and judges at camera clubs in the area. ​

Doug Harpole was born in Shreveport, Louisiana and grew up around Houston, Texas. His earliest memories are of the many family camping trips, including visits to state parks, national forests and the “big ones” out west: Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns, Arches, and Bryce Canyon. In 2018 Doug hiked the entire Appalachian Trail and last year completed half of the Pacific Crest Trail before a knee injury temporarily sidelined him. The Pacific Crest Trail traverses 2,650 miles from Mexico to Canada. He plans on finishing the remaining miles sometime next year.

Doug has lived in Virginia for 30 years. He received his Bachelor’s degree from Texas A&M and his Master’s degree from Virginia Tech, both degrees related to Wildlife Conservation. He then worked at the VT Extension Service for several years. He retired in 2016 and lives outside of Amissville in Fauquier County. 

When and how did you become interested nature and the natural world?
Doug can’t remember a time when he didn’t want to be outside. When he was 4 or 5 years old he was fascinated with the bats that flew around the street lights outside of his family’s home. He would throw things up in the air with the hope that a bat would try and snag it. He was constantly bringing things home that fascinated him – but he wasn’t allowed to bring anything into the house. When he saved up his allowance and bought a microscope, a whole new world opened up for him. 

What is the most amazing thing you have experienced in nature?
Doug shared that while researching terrestrial salamanders he had spent many nights crawling in the forest during rainstorms. “You see a whole different world crawling on the forest floor at night in the rain,” says Doug.  He never thought about slugs much until he saw a pair mating one night. “They are translucent and hermaphroditic so there was a lot going on,” he said. On a different scale, he worked several winters studying overwintering geese in the coastal marshes and rice prairies of Texas. “It’s quite a rush when tens of thousands of geese take flight and you are standing right under them.”

Describe what you do on your own property to support a healthy ecosystem.
Doug and his wife live in a house on four acres near the Rappahannock River where they actively work to attract wildlife of all kinds. They have several different bird feeders and enjoy being able to identify individuals and family groups of birds that visit regularly. They actively work to reduce invasive plants and create an environment that provides food and shelter for all kinds of wildlife. Currently, their growing pollinator garden is planted mostly for wasps – no surprise! Doug also enjoys identifying and encouraging growth of native ferns and mosses. He likes to provide habitat features that make the wildlife more accessible for visiting grandchildren. They have toad houses, wasp/bee houses, stumps (that Doug has drilled multiple holes in), year-round water supply and rotting logs and brush piles that are visited by many animals.   He maintains a packed sand area for solitary wasps nests. Doug installed cover boards in wet areas that are used by salamanders and toads as well as boards in dry areas that attract snakes, lizards, and skinks where they hide, breed and eat. Their property abuts 200 undeveloped forested acres with numerous springs and access to the Rappahannock River that provides a great playground.
     
What is something you would like to share with ORMN members?
“Think small” was Doug’s recommendation. He said that from his first microscope to the magnification loupe he carries with him, he is always excited by the wildlife that most people never see. 

When Doug and I first began discussing a possible presentation he could make to the ORMN members, he asked if our members would be interested in an education program on wasps. He explained that he wasn’t an entomologist but had started to study them on his own several years ago. When Doug started to talk about wasps he became very animated, explaining “they are incredibly diverse, with 130,000 species compared to 20,000 species of bees.” He said the vast majority of wasps are “not the stinging kind” and noted the integral part of the ecosystem that wasps represent. “Bees always get great public relations but wasps are more diverse,” he explained.  “They are a key insect predator and tend to have a bad reputation. I would like to improve their image!”

Interviewed by Charlene Uhl September 2023 ​

Patrice Nielson was born in central New Hampshire. She had four older sisters and they all spent as much time as possible outside in both the summer and the winter – hiking and swimming in the summer and  snowboarding and other winter sports were where their parents could find them. When Patrice was in her teens, the local ski area offered a night student pass season costing only $150. Patrice’s mother would drop her off at 4 or 5 p.m., often with a couple friends, and come get her at 9 or 10 p.m. for bed. This was before cell phones and nobody thought there could be any problem with leaving your kids to enjoy night skiing. In an emergency, there was always a pay phone.

When I asked Patrice about her unique given name, she explained it was a “family affair.” “My parents wanted to engage my four sisters in choosing a name for the baby (me) before I was born,” Patrice explained. They went through numerous baby names in a baby book, letting each sister weigh in on whether they liked or disliked the name. As she remembers the family story, “When they came to Patricia nobody really disliked it but no one really loved it. My dad had a friend in college named Patrice, and when he suggested that everyone liked it,” so Patrice it was.

Patrice’s college degrees are all in the environmental field: she has a B.S. in biology from Brigham Young University-Idaho; a M.S. in Wildlife and and Wildlands Conservation from Brigham Young University, and a Ph.D. in Environmental Science from the University of Maryland College Park.  She is currently Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Trinity Washington University in D.C.

When and how did you become interested in nature and the natural world?
 “As children, my sisters and I were always outside, including me even before I could walk.” Patrice said her first word was “flower” and she never outgrew it. She remembers finding tadpoles, snails and salamanders in a small pond on their property. It was really just a depressed area along a stream that formed a shallow pool that attracted animals. She had a terrarium in her bedroom where she kept some of the animals she found. Her love of animals and nature led her to pursue her degrees in the environmental field, where she developed her teaching philosophy that focuses on student success. It is centered on four core values:

1. Engage students in course material by maintaining an active classroom guided by student questions, real-life application and research-based learning.
2. Empower students with personal and professional growth by reinforcing student and life skills.
3. Develop and apply critical thinking and analysis skills by evaluating strengths and weaknesses of information and making broader connections between topics.
4. Encourage development of a classroom community by getting to know students and encouraging them to help each other.

“My hope is that students leave the classroom not just with more knowledge, but also inspired and enriched to foster lifelong learning and accept their global citizenship,” she explained.

Patrice sees a strong synergism between what she hopes for her students and what the Old Rag Master Naturalist chapter envisions for its volunteers. “ORMN recruits members from the community to become lifelong learners and to use that learning in order to help to restore and preserve the natural environment,” she explained.  “It’s all about getting people involved in nature and to recognize the priceless gift it is to our society.”

​Are Monarch populations increasing, decreasing or staying the same?
“The data show differences in Monarch population totals from year to year, sometimes up and sometimes down.  But the overall trend is clearly a marked decline,” Carolyn noted. She said that between last year’s and this year’s numbers, there was a 22% drop in the number of Monarchs that overwintered in Mexico, where most eastern Monarchs go to spend the winter. 

What are the threats to Monarch survival?
Carolyn said that Monarchs have a lot of predators, including birds, spiders and grasshoppers. “But the loss of habitat is one of the biggest threats to Monarch populations,” she noted. That has been exacerbated by the broad application of insecticides that many farmers use.  “Over the last 20 years, ‘Roundup-ready’ crops are being planted and entire fields are being sprayed, as opposed to selective spraying that had been the practice before,” Carolyn explained.  There has also been a loss of overwintering habitat in Mexico.

What can ORMN members and others do to help support Monarch butterflies?
“Plant milkweed and nectar plants,” she said. She noted that even people who live in cities and towns can help Monarchs by planting the food they need and the milkweed they require to lay their eggs. Carolyn encourages everyone to talk to people about Monarchs. “Just sharing your own admiration of these beautiful creatures may change someone’s behavior.” She shared a conversation she had at her local gym with another member, who then became inspired to plant milkwood and native wildflowers on her property. “Every effort is important,” Carolyn emphasized. “If each one of us told five people about Monarchs, and those five people told five people – you get the picture!”

Interviewed by Charlene Uhl 
March 2023

What is something you would like to share with ORMN members?
Larry serves as the Chair of the Regulatory Affairs Committee of the Virginia Herpetological Society (“a one-man show”) where he is an advocate and liaison with the community.  He is also on the educational outreach committee and travels all over Virginia, giving talks, tabling at various events, meeting with educators, outreach coordinators, and others to share his knowledge of snakes and to help more people appreciate the invaluable role they plan in the natural world. He has presented to a number of Master Naturalist chapters in Virginia as well as given talks to preschools, and emergency management certification courses on snake bite treatment and venomous snake identification to help them better understand the physiology, behavior and value of snakes in Virginia.

This liaison role led to Larry appointment  as stakeholder to the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources planning group, which was charged with developing a plan to encourage people to view wildlife. “VDWR never had a position or information on viewing wildlife so the planning group asked a researcher from Virginia Institute of Technology (VTEC) to help. With the help of this VTEC researcher we developed a statewide plan with goals and milestones that were published in 2021,” Larry explained. He is very proud to have been a part of this effort and looks forward to more opportunities to give back to the community.
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Interviewed by Charlene Uhl, January 2023

Karen Tavakoli’s family moved to Illinois when she was nine years old, which allowed the family to realize their dream of having a horse farm. Their farm was surrounded by thousands of acres of land that was farmed by local farmers for hay or crop production. The barter system was actively utilized, and as her family became part of the community, she and her sister also became part of the farming workforce. . “I was hooked from the start,” said Karen. In exchange for helping in the hayfields, a local farmer would have his son help them unload the square bales for their horses and stack them in their farm’s hayloft. She learned to drive and operate the hay baler the very next year. In her teens, she learned to plow fields, run the combine, and move semi-trucks around the fields for easier staging.  “Although I loved farming and growing things,” she explained, “the challenges and hardships I observed made me choose a different career path when the time came.” Her own family faced hardship during the 2008 recession which led them to move to Virginia.

When she graduated from high school, Karen knew she wanted to make a difference so she enrolled in college part-time and became a firefighter/EMT with plans to continue her education, with the goal of eventually becoming a nurse. After about five years working as an EMT in the emergency room at the Level 1 Trauma Center in Fairfax and continuing to take college classes, “I realized I was miserable and wanted to go back to what truly made me happy - growing plants and being out in nature.”  She gave notice at the hospital, didn’t sign up for any more college classes and began to study and read all she could about landscaping with nature and native plants. She also started to help friends and neighbors with small landscaping projects around their homes. This led to applying for a position at Fauquier Spring Country Club as a horticulturist.

Karen noted that most of the plant beds on the country club grounds were filled with annuals that were pulled up and discarded at the end of the season. She started to work with a local wholesale company – Owl Run Nursery – to introduce perennials and shrubs around the golf course.  During one of her visits to Owl Run Nursery, she mentioned to the owner that she was currently studying for the chemical applicator’s license. He wanted to hire her to do some spraying at the nursery but Karen was too busy at the time to take on another task.  As the growing season came to an end, so did her position at Fauquier Springs Country Club and she was laid off. During her layoff, the owner of Owl Run Nursery contacted her to see if she was available to come out for a consult “and the rest is history” Karen said with a smile.

When and how did you become interested in nature and the natural world? 
“I can’t recall a moment when I wasn’t interested in nature,” Karen shared, “but I know it started with my parents who are also nature lovers who care about the environment.” Karen recounted how she recently moved and, in the process of unpacking, she found her second grade yearbook. “We had to write something about each month,” she said. “For the month of April, I wrote about how much I loved Earth Day and that ‘every day should be Earth Day!’”
  
Describe what you do on your property to support a healthy ecosystem.
Karen has been removing lawn and invasive plants, with the goal of having only 20% being lawn and the remaining 80% planted with a diverse assortment of native shrubs and perennials. While a small number are not native, “I can’t let go of my grandma’s daffodils or peonies”, she explained; “but they are not invasive.”

Due to a very abundant mosquito population on rainy days, Karen was motivated to put up bat houses – both to encourage their presence as well as a natural defense system against the mosquitoes. “When I put up the bat houses around my home, several neighbors expressed concern.” The neighbors asked if she wasn’t worried about rabies from the bats. Karen shared the fact that one bat can eat up to 1,000 mosquito-sized insects per hour (whereas the odds of a human getting bitten by a bat is estimated at 1 in one million and getting rabies from a bat bite was about one in 200). “It was a pretty teachable moment,” she said with a big smile. 

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​CLICK HERE to watch Alison Zak's October 2022 presentation.   NOTE -- the first 9 minutes have captions but poor audio quality.  This is remedied for the final 51 minutes.

Alison Zak, born in Tampa, Florida, earned her undergraduate degree at the University of South Florida, and then went on to get her masters in anthropology at San Diego State University where she studied primatology and human-wildlife conflict.  She worked for six years in environmental education and outreach, including at the Potomac Valley Audubon Society, the National Zoo, and most recently at the Clifton Institute.   Alison is also an Emerging Wildlife Conservation Leader (Class 9), writer, and yoga teacher. 

Alison is founder of the Human-Beaver Coexistence Fund (HBCF), an organization dedicated to educating the public about the benefits of coexisting with beavers. The organization provides informational resources and financial support to help address human-beaver conflict using nonlethal management strategies. Partners include the Clifton Institute, Potomac Valley Audubon Society, Green Muslims, Old Town’s Open Book, the Animal Welfare Institute, and Beaver Institute.

When and how did you become interested in nature and the natural world? 
Like most children, Alison was always interested in nature. She had a large collection of stuffed animals as a 5-year old, and when she was in 3rd grade her grandfather gave her a bird field guide to use, which made her decide she wanted to be an ornithologist. She often observed the interaction of people with nature and noted that nature was often discussed as if “people weren’t part of nature.”

After becoming a yoga instructor, Alison took great joy in incorporating mindfulness practices in outdoor programs to inspire curiosity and compassion and enhance her clients’ connection with nature. She is fascinated with the many poses that have names associated with nature (e.g., pigeon, downward facing dog, cow-face and of course, Sun Salutation). Alison began to read non-fiction books and essays that discussed the intersection of people and animals and to write about the intersection between people and nature. She also participated in a “pitch competition” on Twitter that resulted in an editor choosing her book proposal on  using yoga to connect with animals and nature. Alison's book, Wild Asana, is scheduled to come out in summer 2023. 

Describe what you do on your property to support a healthy ecosystem.
“My husband and I have a townhome in Oakton,” Alison said. “Like most townhomes we have a small fenced-in yard.” They decided about a year ago to convert everything to native plants, with the exception of a single raised bed for growing their own food. They put in two pawpaw trees and “we have even put pots with native plants along the fence outside our yard to extend that ‘natural environment’ and so far no one has complained yet!”  Alison and her husband also convinced the townhome association's pest control company not to spray along their fence line. The pest control technician highlighted that the spray would kill spiders--thinking that would be a selling point for the “woman of the house."  “My husband said, ‘You don’t know my wife.' "  
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