Enviro Expo at Philpot

You can count on the month of April for beautiful wildflowers, great trout fishing and the Environmental Expo at Philpott Lake. Hosted each year by the Friends of Philpott and the Army Corps of Engineers, the expo  kicks off Earth Week and showcases local non profit organizations, clubs and government agencies and their connection to preserving and promoting the areas natural resources.

The theme for this years event : "Be Water and Energy Wise."
FOP's own Linda Drage is the ringmaster for this event and once again she and her group pulled together a diverse selection of groups and agencies with environmental concerns and solutions.
Linda estimated crowd attendance at over 400 !
There was music, food and fun and a wonderful opportunity to learn about all the groups that are working to promote and protect our fabulous natural and cultural resources here in Southern Virginia.
Thanks to Friends and Phipott and the Army Corps of Engineers for hosting another great event !

Dan River Basin board member Ellen Jessee speaks with Danny Martin at the DRBA display

Al Kitterage and Darrin Doss demonstrate fly tying techniques at the Trout Unlimited Display.  Darrin took a mayfly from the tub-o-bugs and put it in a petri dish alongside a pheasant tail nymph he had just tied to show how fly fishermen tie flies that mimic the aquatic insects in the stream.

We were fortunate to have Mary Dail and Mike Hutchins from the DEQ come down and partner with DRBA on the macro invertebrate display.  They had an additional "Tub-O- Bugs" complete with water monitoring equipment set up to show the public how the recent water quality studies were conducted on the Smith River.

Mary Dail of DEQ explains how macro invertebrate populations are an indicator or water quality in our rivers and streams.

 Some future environmentalist get a closer look at a Helgramite at DRBA's "Tub-O-Bugs"

My, they do grow up fast don't they ?  Here's former DRBA staff member Jennifer Doss and with Hunter, who had a great time with the tub-o-bugs and all the animals at the expo !