Having served as Executive Director of the Nature Foundation at Wintergreen for only 10 months, Dr. Long is proceeding cautiously
The Nature Foundation at Wintergreen’s Elizabeth Long did say she was beginning to think about thinking about a new strategic plan, but her wide-ranging presentation in October mostly stuck close to the basics.
The new-to-Wintergreen executive nevertheless offered up several interesting insights at a Here to Stay in Wintergreen meeting in the valley on October 21:
• Long says her passions in the natural world are birds and butterflies. Her doctoral dissertation was on butterflies, which she explained with a grin saying that field work with birds requires getting up very early in the mornings, “but butterflies are always out there.”
• The Nature Foundation at Wintergreen’s annual operating budget is about $600,000, she noted. There is a small endowment (about $3 million invested), but memberships and donations are major sources of funding.
• Native plants will continue to be a major focus. She is looking to revive the program where volunteers “rescue” native plants on lots being being developed. She also suggested the Nature Foundation could be a “hub of information” about native plants in the area, adding that volunteers looking at growing native plants that are not normally propagated.
• While discussions are just starting, there are talks with the resort about how the Nature Foundation could work to have more plantings of natives around the golf courses, possibility also cooperating with homeowners next to the golf courses in the valley and on the mountain.
• “The research work we do isn’t about running experiments, but studying how things are now,” she noted at one point, saying she was “a researcher by training.”
• Pointing to Wintergreen’s history with caring about the nature in the valley and on the mountain, Long said she was impressed how it had not been “overdone” by the originial developers.
• Long said that she had heard from some who said that the Nature Foundation had “not served” the valley. Plans are being made to change that perception with more programs offered at Tuckahoe Clubhouse.
• The 2027 big spring program at the Nature Foundation is going to be “very different,” thanks to the new special events coordinator at the Nature Foundation, Tessa Sarvay.
Elizabeth Long was invited to speak at Here to Stay in Wintergreen’s monthly coffee at Tuckahoe Clubhouse on October 21.
Elizabeth Long described herself this way:
An ecologist and evolutionary biologist with a BA from University of Richmond (Biology), a MS from William and Mary (Peregrine Falcon), and a PhD, from University of California at Davis (Butterflies) who grew up in Roanoke, but has has lived all over the country.
She has had several professional positions, including two decades of service at nonprofits similar to the Nature Foundation at Wintergreen such as the Mohonk Preserve, the Geological Society of America, and the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County.
