NOVA Parks News

NOVA Parks (formerly the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority) has always been at the forefront of regional land conservation, historic preservation, and recreation. Today we throwback to 2013 and the acquisition of two of NOVA Parks’ with “sanctuary” in the name.

Just about twenty years ago the Webb family donated land to the Audubon Naturalist Society (ANS). The area became known as the Webb Sanctuary. The property is a twenty-acre piece of nature just outside of the Town of Clifton. Then, in November of 2013, ANS gave this beautiful property to NOVA Parks. It was part of a larger partnership between ANS and NOVA Parks that has been formed over the previous several years.

In Leesburg, ANS has another beautiful piece of nature; an incredible sixty-eight-acre property on the western edge of town complete with a century-old manor house, fields, forests, and ponds teeming with flora and fauna. It is called the Rust Sanctuary. It was donated years earlier to ANS from the Rust Family. NOVA Parks was able to acquire this gem of a property in a long-term lease with the ANS; one that will last over the next forty years. In this partnership, ANS conducts popular nature education programs including summer camps at the site, and NOVA Parks manages the property and runs events.

NOVA Parks and the ANS have a great partnership with the operation and maintenance of both of these areas. It is a partnership that has to do with aligning strengths. ANS has over a hundred years of environmental education as their strength. NOVA Parks owns and manages over twelve-thousand acres of parkland in the Northern Virginia region, which is our strength.

The park authority is proud to be in the business of partnering with other strong organizations such as the ANS. Many of the most ambitious efforts in growing and managing the regional park system are done through partnerships.

Here is a recent video featuring the many partnerships that define NOVA Parks today.