The Dulles Greenway Drive for Charity was another amazing success this year, bringing in a total of $348,000 that is distributed across six local nonprofits and a scholarship program that reaches every high school in Loudoun. A big thank you to all of you who took the Dulles Greenway on May 18th for your commute! It really made a difference!
This was the 12th year that Loudoun Wildlife received funds from this event and it has been a real game changer for us. Over the years, these funds have enabled us to develop and produce the Field Guide to the Butterflies of Loudoun, coordinate numerous Habitat Restoration projects like those at the Phillips Farm in Waterford, create and run our amphibian programs and restore the vernal pools at Morven Park.
In addition to being a key funding stream for our overall work, the Drive for Charity funds helped us launch and sustain our Monarch Butterfly campaign, which has reached thousands of people across the area and helped us donate milkweed plants to 46 Loudoun schools to establish Monarch waystations for students and teachers to use.
It also enabled us to further expand our youth and family programs, which today offers monthly events across the county and reaches children at all ages with educational opportunities that range from bats and their lifecycles to insect life in local streams and what they tell us about water quality, to scout projects to seed bomb with local native wildflowers.
The Dulles Greenway Toll Road Investor Partnership II (TRIP II) also maintains the Dulles Greenway wetlands. For those of you who have come out with us on field trips to these wetlands, you know how incredibly special this place is. It’s because of the continued stewardship by the Dulles Greenway TRIP II that these wetlands thrive and species of all sorts have a large and robust healthy habitat that is their own.
We give our thanks to the Dulles Greenway TRIP II for their generosity. Over the last 12 years, they have donated $3 million to local charities and scholarships and we know those funds have made a real difference in our community.
