The Friends of Dyke Marsh and the National Park Service hosted 35 volunteers, ages five to unknown, who collected 50 big bags of trash for three hours along the Potomac River and Dyke Marsh shoreline during low tide on September 22.
Dr. Desiree Narango, an ecologist, gave a presentation to 70 people on September 12, 2018, explaining how native and non-native plants affect breeding bird populations, behavior and food web interactions. She worked with the Smithsonian Institution's Neighborhood Nestwatch program which focuses on breeding birds in urban/suburban backyards. Like most songbirds, Carolina chickadees are very dependent on caterpillars and other insects when raising their young. A chickadee with four to seven young, needs between 390 to 570 caterpillars every day to feed their young. Caterpillars are very dependent on certain host plants.
Crews operating barges, cranes and boats are at work this fall, 2018, building the breakwater in the Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve, the first stage of Dyke Marsh restoration. The U.S. Geological Survey’s 2010 and 2013 studies identified building a breakwater as the first priority of restoration, a riprap structure designed to replicate the historic promontory removed by dredgers.
The Mount Vernon Gazette, Connection Newspapers, published an article on our native plant restoration project. You can read it here.
Our partners are the National Park Service, Earth Sangha and the Audubon Society of Northern Virginia. We also appreciate support from the National Environmental Education Foundation and Transurban.
Sign up to help us control invasive plants and make this project a success at
The Mount Vernon Gazette (Connection newspapers) published a front-page article on August 16, 2018, by Jerry Fill on the start of the restoration of Dyke Marsh. You can read the entire article online here.
Several FODMers learned about native and non-native submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) of Dyke Marsh and the Potomac River on July 14, 2018, when Nancy Rybicki gave a tutorial and led a paddle. Dr. Rybicki is an aquatic plant ecologist and wetlands scientist, retired from the U.S. Geological Survey. In her 37 years of studying the vegetation of the Potomac River, she has correlated the presence of submerged aquatic vegetation with water quality.
