It has been a couple of weeks now since a black bear ventured into Herndon, but the town is still riding the high of that rare visitation.
The bear has inspired a new promotional campaign from the Herndon Parks and Recreation Department, which announced Monday (June 23) that it has “hired” Elden the Bear to serve as its ambassador.
This week kicked off with a greeting from an unexpected furry face for some Herndon residents.
A black bear was spotted roaming the area around Alabama Drive and Hillwood Court north of Haley M. Smith Park this morning (Monday), the Herndon Police Department confirmed shortly before 9 a.m.
The Town of Vienna is hoping to buck its deer population with new measures outlawing feeding deer and other wild animals.
A new ordinance in Vienna would make it illegal for anyone to “place, distribute or allow the placement of food, salt, minerals or similar substances to feed or attract deer at any time.”
A petition campaign to save a local beaver at Kingstowne Lake won property management over: Wally will live.
According to residents, Wally moved to the man-made stormwater management pond known as Kingstowne Lake sometime in September last year. Whether it’s just one beaver or a couple is unclear — a licensed wildlife expert said over 60 trees had been damaged by the beaver, indicating there could be more than one.
Update 3/6 — Wally lives
Wally the Beaver’s days at Kingstowne Lake may be numbered.
The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors reacted tepidly this week to a staff proposal that would shift wildlife management responsibilities from the county’s police department to the Fairfax County Park Authority.
“We need a little more time to discuss this [and] make sure we think this through, very carefully,” Hunter Mill District Supervisor Walter Alcorn said at a meeting of the board’s safety and security committee on Tuesday (Feb. 11).
Even with increased development in the area, Reston’s bird population has remained steady — at least according to Reston Association’s annual bird counts.
The organization’s environmental staff and volunteers identified 1,685 individual birds from 52 different species during their 2025 Reston Winter Bird Count, which was conducted on a Saturday in early January.
Fairfax County leaders have joined hundreds of municipalities across the nation in pledging to do more to help the monarch butterfly’s survival.
The county’s Board of Supervisors agreed during its Jan. 14 meeting to sign on to the National Wildlife Foundation’s Mayors’ Monarch Pledge Program, which commits local governments to take various actions to stem loss of habitat for pollinators.
Beneath a bustling stretch of Fairfax County Parkway lies a little-known wildlife crossing that might hold the key to reducing animal-vehicle collisions in Virginia.
Last Wednesday (Oct. 30), Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) and State Sen. David Marsden (D-35) toured the underpass nestled between Davison Army Airfield and Fort Belvoir. Constructed in the 1990s and still one of the state’s few such installations, the 192-foot-long, 20-foot-high structure facilitates safe migration for species from deer and bears to snakes and turtles.
A townhome development is now under construction on Fannie Mae’s former office campus in Reston.
When setting the stage for construction, which began in August, developer Wheelock Communities enlisted the nonprofit Tanya’s Turtle Project to relocate turtles inhabiting the ponds in the area. The ponds were dewatered to manage water quality and remove invasive plants in and around the ponds.
