Join the Friends of Mason Neck State Park

at their Annual Holiday Celebration,

Swanfall --2 PM December 4

Tundra Swans return to the Great Marsh on Mason Neck each fall, migrating from eastern Alaska and the Canadian Arctic. You can learn all about them at the Friends of Mason Neck State Park’s annual Swanfall holiday celebration in the Ann Mason Room of Gunston Hall on December 4. 

We’ll start at 2 PM with a great buffet of hors d’oeuvres and desserts.

  

At 3 PM Dr. Tom Wood, ornithologist and Associate Professor of Integrative and Interdisciplinary Studies at George Mason University, and Tom Blackburn, Past President of the Audubon Society of Northern Virginia, will present a program on Tundra Swans. You’ll learn about their lives, their long migration from Alaska and northern Canada to the coastal mid-Atlantic, as well as their close relationship to other swans. 

    

Swanfall is open to everyone. Members and one guest can register for $15 apiece. Nonmembers can register for $20.  You can register here.

Gunston Hall is located at 10709 Gunston Road, Lorton VA.

.

Join the Fight Against Disposable Plastic

The Friends of Mason Neck State Park are doing their part to slow the production and disposal of plastics.  Plastic bottles take as long as 450 years to decompose in the environment.  Before they do, they break down into "micro-plastic" bits that are eaten by animals and can end up in our own bodies.  On land, plastic adversely affects soil fertility, and can choke our streams and rivers.

The Friends of Mason Neck State Park have stopped offering disposable water bottles to Park volunteers and at Friends events.  Instead, they are offering free multi-use bottles that recipients can take home with them.  Hopefully, people will use these bottles instead of buying more disposable ones.  

Mason Neck State Park also is committed to reducing the use of disposable plastic bottles and has installed water bottle filling stations at the Visitor Center and the picnic area.           

Do your part too:  find ways to limit your use of disposable plastics, including those grocery store bags that have a typical useful life of 15 minutes -- the time to get from store to home -- and take 1000 years to decompose in a landfill.