Subject: FOMR: September 2026 on the Middle River🏕️🥳
Thank You For Being a Friend!
Our 2026 Friends Fest was a great success thanks to all of you!! We are so grateful for all of our wonderful volunteers, sponsors, and Friends.
A huge, special thank you to our Friends Fest volunteers who planned and organized for months, the people who donated prizes and provided tasty side dishes, the folks who set it all up and took it all down, and those who hauled away trash, recycling, and compost. And we always deeply appreciate the Webster family who generously allowed us the use of their wide-open riverfront property to celebrate on! Thank you all for giving us an excuse to have fun together!
Last but not least, congratulations to our 2026 Kayak and Stand-up Paddle Board Winners, Jimmy Deyo and Ben Carr! We can't wait to see you two out on the Middle in your new vessels.
Join Us at The Enchanted Mushroom Festival this Saturday
FOMR will have a table at the Enchanted Mushroom Festival in downtown Churchville this Saturday from 10 AM to 5 PM! We hope to see you there!
Meet a Friend of the Middle River: Cowboy Hay
FOMR Board Member Bruce Dorries recently sat down with stalwart FOMR volunteer Cowboy Hay to learn more about why Cowboy is a Friend of the Middle River.
"I love that the work I do [with FOMR] is good for the environment. I like to fish and I like to help clean up the river. I also like helping with [benthic] displays at events. Kids will think that clear, [still] water is the cleanest, but I tell the kids that clean water has bugs and fish in it and that chemicals will kill the bugs and fish. Those kids may one day be the people who clean the river or at least think before putting pollutants in the river."
Upcoming Science Talk: A Belize - Waynesboro Conservation Bridge
October's Guest Speaker, Heather Barrett, is coming from Belize to Waynesboro to present the Science Talk on Tuesday, October 13th, at 7 PM at the Wayne Theatre. Heather is the Deputy Director of the Belize Foundation for Research & Environmental Education (BFREE) located on the north-eastern coast of Central America. She will explain how an avian research program generated data on Neotropical migratory bird movements along the Eastern Flyway, including movements from migratory hubs such as Waynesboro, to the tropical wintering grounds in Belize.
The presentation will be livestreamed from the Wayne Theatre and the Virginia Museum of Natural History Facebook pages. Afterwards, it will be posted as a video on those Facebook pages and on https://www.youtube.com/@thecenterforcoldwatersrest6681.
Blue Ridge PRISM Fall Virtual Webinar: Special Guest Joan Maloof, Founder of the Old Growth Forest Network
Oct 7, 2026 at 11:30 AM
Have you ever had a chance to walk through a forest that’s gone centuries without logging? Maybe not—old-growth forests are extraordinarily rare. Today, only about 1 percent of eastern forests qualify as old growth. In Virginia, the percentage is even smaller. These living remnants of our original forests reveal what nature can accomplish when given time.
Dr. Joan Maloof is one of America’s leading voices for the protection of old-growth forests. An ecologist, author, educator, and conservation leader, she is the founder of the Old-Growth Forest Network, the only national organization dedicated to ensuring that every U.S. county capable of supporting forests has at least one permanently protected, publicly accessible forest that will never be logged.
She has inspired communities nationwide to preserve forests where people of all ages can experience the beauty, biodiversity, and ecological richness of mature and ancient woodlands.
This presentation explores the importance of old-growth forests and explains why protecting the few that remain—and allowing more forests to grow old—is essential for the health of both people and the planet.
