A decision on Bles Park is only days away: Your voice is urgently needed!

All photos above are from Bles Park and courtesy of Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy’s Michael Myers.Main photo: Milkweed and main pond at Bles Park. Photos along bottom row: blue-headed vireo, muskrat, great egret, wood duck, solitary sandpiper. 1/21/22 UPDATE from Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy  We thank Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy (LWC) and all… Continue reading

Take Action: Tell DC Mayor Bowser to Get Plastic Bottles Out of Our Water!

Plastic bottles are everywhere. They’re strewn across the streets of our neighborhoods, filling up gutters and alleyways. They’re all over the city’s parks and green spaces, and make it difficult to enjoy nature. Perhaps most visibly, they fill up our waterways, the end point for a large portion of litter.… Continue reading

ANS Testifies at DC Council Performance Oversight Hearings

It seems like just yesterday that we were in the middle of last year’s budget process in Washington, DC. Once again we find ourselves balancing our city-wide checkbook, but this time in preparation for the 2022 fiscal year. Before DC’s proposed budget is released though, the DC Council holds performance… Continue reading

Healing our Landscapes: Passage of the Great American Outdoors Act

This article was published in our Autumn 2020 Naturalist Quarterly special edition, “Healing Our Land – The Election Issue.” Please visit www.anshome.org/naturalist-quarterly to see the rest of the stories in the issue.   From the Dakota Badlands to the cathedral of Yosemite to Rock Creek Park and the Frederick Douglass… Continue reading

Help Stop Washington Gas from Polluting DC!

No More Methane   Washington Gas is the largest gas utility in Washington, DC, supplying over 1 million customers in the region with “natural” gas to heat our homes and cook our food. Unfortunately though, having “natural” gas in our homes is anything but natural. It is extracted from deep below… Continue reading

Breathing: Building Partnerships

This is the third in a series about what we learned in researching and drafting testimony on the DC Metropolitan Police Department budget from an environmental perspective this year. Part 1: Introduction. Part 2: Testimony. Our work on the DC Metropolitan Police Department Budget testimony is a continuation of our… Continue reading

Breathing: Investing in Healthy Communities

After reading Caroline’s first post in this series, we hope you’ll see why we found it necessary for us to explicitly think about the structures of policing in our advocacy work.  Although we wrote testimony to the D.C. Council on the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) budget, we ended up not… Continue reading

Priority Campaign Area: Biodiversity & Habitats

This is one in a series introducing ANS’ new Conservation Advocacy Priority Campaign Areas. Since 1897, ANS has worked to protect the habitats and wildlife of the Washington, DC, region. The stream valley corridors that knit our region together with ribbons of blue and green space are critically important in… Continue reading

Amy Cooper, Rachel Carson, and the Japanese art of Kintsugi

The Audubon Naturalist Society Calls Out Racist Actions and Calls Forth Healing America’s Brokenness On the day that media and social media exposed a white woman’s racist actions, meant to threaten and potentially destroy a black man’s life, we at the Audubon Naturalist Society were deeply engaged in preparing for… Continue reading

CREEK CRITTERS: Don’t Be Afraid to Get Bitten by the ‘Creek Critters’ Bug!

ANS released an updated version of our CREEK CRITTERS® app. If you already have the app, please download the latest version. If you don’t have the app, give it a try! CREEK CRITTERS® is available as a free download from the Apple App Store and Google Play. You have probably… Continue reading