Dear Friends of the James River Park

As you likely know, we’ve grown the footprint of the James River Park System over the past year, and we’ll likely set another record for visitation. This means that the needs of Park staff and the scope of our work has to evolve. We constantly strive to find new ways to support the Park, and to improve our work towards our mission: Preserve, Protect, and Enhance the Park.

This has been a Summer of trying new things at FOJRP, and I wanted to share more information with you all about some of the new efforts we have undertaken to help protect, and enhance the JRPS.

Pony Pasture Security – After a large number of issues and complaints, we decided to give this area of the Park a little extra attention during this peak season. We worked with the City to support additional security on the weekends. They are there to deal with parking issues and general mischief. Our main role in that process has been to provide quick and agile funding to get those personnel in place. They have been present for several weeks in a row now, and will work through the end of the Summer.

Pony Pasture Cleanups – We are hosting a standing cleanup project at Pony Pasture every Monday morning at 7 am through Labor Day. The goal is to help get the Park reset from the weekend and reduce the risk of trash ending up in the James River. Anyone is welcome to join us, and we provide all the necessary supplies. For now, our capacity only allows for one program like this per week. With additional funding and staffing, it would be possible for us to support more volunteer projects like this to help people take care of the parts of the Park that mean the most to them.

Graffiti Team – The Summer 2024 anti-graffiti efforts have been well received so far. Thanks to our friends at CoStar, we should be able to fund this program again for next Summer. Their main work has been around Belle Isle and the Dry Rocks, but they have been spending time throughout the Park. This effort is aimed at reducing graffiti overall, by quickly removing or covering it. The hope is that eventually, the City will provide some type of graffiti park or free wall space where we can redirect people.

Graffiti disrupts people’s enjoyment of our natural spaces and causes permanent damage to unique geological and biological resources. It is also not always innocent artwork. The team covers a lot of offensive and negative graffiti that makes the Park feel less welcoming. My goal is to eventually figure out a way to have these positions funded year-round as a way to add capacity for the JRPS staff and keep the Park free of graffiti.

Invasive Plant Management Team – We have worked with our Invasive Plant Management Team to make some updates to the way they do their jobs. The biggest change will be making them official FOJRP employees, instead of the “long-term temp” arrangement we have been working with. That should be effective by the end of August. They have always been paid through funds we raise, and this will allow us to dedicate more funding to their work beyond the life of the grant they are currently working under.

We are also expanding the hours they are working, which should help them address more issues in the Park. Moving to three full-time and one part-time position greatly increases their capacity to fight invasive plants in the Park. This team is an efficient and effective investment for us to make in Park conservation, and we are happy to help support their work.

These are just a few of the ways we are putting the money you donate to us to work. We have also been hard at work fundraising and working with Park staff on a huge number of other initiatives. In the next few weeks, you will hear about projects at the Pump House, updates on our Belle Isle work, and a new equipment purchase we are supporting for the Trail Crew.

If you like the types of things you see us doing please consider making a gift to support our work. (jamesriverpark.org/donate) There are a lot of different ways to get involved.  If you are already a donor, thank you so much! I hope we can continue to earn your support this year.

See you in the park.

-Josh