The new Virginia Invasive Plant Coalition is on a mission to make dramatic progress against invasive plants and support the use of native plants. Its new website - VirginiaInvasives.org - lays out the coalition’s Common Ground Agenda.
In mid-December 2023, representatives of public, private, and nonprofit groups from around the state met in Charlottesville for a three day workshop - Imagining a Virginia Without Invasive Plants: A Statewide Future Search Strategic Planning Workshop. With the support of a grant from the Richard K. Mellon Foundation, Blue Ridge PRISM sponsored and hosted the workshop.
Approximately 80 attendees included state and local employees, nonprofit leaders, service providers, private landowners, and three members of the Virginia House of Delegates.
Together, they represented a microcosm of the interconnected statewide community that deals with the influences of invasive plants and the lack of availability of native plants.
The overarching goal of the event was to build a statewide coalition and strategic blueprint to reduce invasive plants and increase the availability of native plants in Virginia.
Learn more about the coalition’s 10 goals on its new website - VirginiaInvasives.org
