Training for New VBWT Birdability Project
Did you know that 1 in every 4 American adults have a disability? Despite this being a huge portion of the population, disabled people continue to have unequal access to natural resources. A part of this barrier is information-based. If there is any accessibility information on a park's website, it is often very basic (simply stating that a trail is "ADA-compliant") without saying the trail substrate, whether or not there are accessible restrooms, or benches, to name a few.

With the help of Virginia Master Naturalists, we can help to reduce or remove this information barrier. Birdability is a non-profit group that has created an interactive map (https://birdability.org/map) for finding accessible locations all over the world. Using their resource, we can improve access to Virginia Bird and Wildlife Trail sites, known as great places to view wildlife. Our goal is to put every accessible VBWT site on the map. Lisa Mease, intern with DWR's Watchable Wildlife program and Watchable Wildlife Biologist Meagan Thomas will be presenting a training workshop about this exciting new opportunity and how you can help. The day after the training session, we will send information out to all chapters about the activity details, including a Better Impact template so that chapters can approve the activity. Volunteers who want to participate in the activity but who cannot attend the training live should plan on watching the recording.

Date: Tuesday, October 8, 6:30-8:30 pm
Location: Zoom
Registration: Please pre-register at https://virginiatech.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUudOytrTstG9WOAMaz2iT1bae_KJkA7ry1
Recording: The session will be recorded, and we will share the link for the recording in the following bi-weekly email and on Better Impact.