Forest buffer initiative in Charlottesville, Va., protects a Chesapeake Bay tributary

Before planting 350 native trees across a stretch of Darden Towe Park in Charlottesville, Virginia, the Rivanna Conservation Alliance (RCA) needed a clean slate. 

A dense thicket of invasive vines and Callery pear trees had taken over a section of the park that borders the Rivanna River. These invasives had crept onto the banks of the Virginia tributary, smothering native trees and crowding out new vegetation. 

“We actually had a forestry mulcher come in here and clear an acre that was basically nothing but invasives,” said Lisa Wittenborn, executive director of RCA. Sparing what few native plants they could find, the organization cleared enough room to begin rebuilding the park’s streamside tree canopy. “We're basically replanting this whole forest,” said Wittenborn. 

During spring 2025, a combination of RCA volunteers and contractors filled in the newly cleared area with 350 trees, for a total of 500 trees planted across Darden Towe Park. Their last outing in April capped off a year-long effort to plant and preserve the trees growing within close proximity of the Rivanna River—known as riparian forest buffers—in three Charlottesville parks where tree canopy was low. 

“By the time we're done at the end of this month, we will have planted 1,800 or more trees,” said Wittenborn on the day of their final planting in Darden Towe Park. 

RCA is a small nonprofit with about five full-time staff members and a few hundred volunteers at their side. The organization was formed in 2016 when the Rivanna Conservation Society and StreamWatch decided to merge into one group dedicated to the Rivanna River’s protection.

With a 766-square-mile watershed, the Rivanna stretches through forest, farmland, city and suburb, encompassing all of Charlottesville. The tributary is within the larger Chesapeake Bay watershed and drains into the James River which feeds the Bay. 

But it’s within the urban heart of Charlottesville where forest buffers are most threatened. Here, the abundance of impervious surfaces, like roads and parking lots, result in more intense stormwater runoff which erodes the banks that buffers cling to. Invasive plants have also spread across the city, weakening trees by limiting their access to sunlight and adding weight to branches and crowns. 

As one of the most cost-effective ways of improving water quality, forest buffers are critical for the health of a river. They stabilize banks which prevent erosion, soak up stormwater runoff from nearby communities and cool the water which results in better habitat for fish. For community members, healthy forest buffers can reduce flooding and lower costs needed to treat drinking water. 

“Having a lot of tree canopy provides shade to the river which keeps the water cool, stops bacteria from multiplying and is overall a filter for industrial and urban runoff,” said Bailey Pleasant, a Watershed Coordinator at RCA who leads much of the volunteer tree plantings. 

The Chesapeake Bay Program has a goal of restoring 900 miles of riparian forest buffers per year, and conserving existing buffers until at least 70% of riparian areas in the watershed are forested. 

In 2022, RCA received a National Fish and Wildlife Federation (NFWF) Small Watershed Grant (SWG) to restore forest buffers within its urban corridor. The NFWF manages SWGs, which are funded by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Chesapeake Bay Program Office. Using that funding, RCA teamed up with nonprofits, local governments, technical experts and other community stakeholders to establish the Rivanna River Forest Health and Resilience Project, which collectively leads the effort. 

To start, the partnership set up a volunteer-based effort to find out where forest buffer management was most needed. The partnership worked with Wild Ginger Field Services to design a field data collection plan, and then roped in volunteers to survey 135 acres of forest. Using that data, the environmental consulting firm Ecosystem Services produced maps depicting the health of Charlottesville’s forest buffers. 

“We got the color-coded maps that showed where the invasives are really intense and where the tree canopy is healthy, and where it's not,” said Wittenborn. 

With that data in hand, the Partnership picked high-priority areas in the three parks along a five-mile stretch of the river where they could scale back invasive plants and restore buffers: Darden Towe Park, Penn Park and Riverview Park. Collaborating with another local nonprofit, Blue Ridge PRISM, the partnership spent the summer of 2024 developing a strategy, and surveying and interviewing homeowners and homeowner associations near those parks to find out how much they knew about invasive species and forest buffer loss. 

“We were trying to figure out what our private property owners know about these issues, what they are doing and what are the reasons they may not be doing anything,” said Wittenborn. 

From fall to winter, contractors and volunteers—including a group of paid high school students working with ReLeaf Cville—got busy removing invasive plants in priority areas. Volunteers and contractors collectively worked across 22 acres clearing invasive plants such as oriental bittersweet, English Ivy, honeysuckle and shrubs like Autumn olive and multiflora rose. This summer, the partnership will target species like kudzu and Japanese knotweed, which are most prominent during warm months. 

With a portion of the invasives removed, RCA began planting trees in spring 2025. Using both contractors and volunteers, the organization is on track to plant at least 1,800 trees in their three target parks, significantly expanding forest buffers within the heart of Charlottesville. The Albemarle County Parks and Recreation, which is a member of the forest buffer partnership, said that expanding forest buffers in community parks would not have happened this quickly if it weren’t for RCA’s leadership.

“Maybe in 15 years we could have done something like this,” said Jessie Wingo, natural resource specialist with Albemarle County Parks and Recreation.

Going forward, the partnership will continue managing invasive species, checking in on the buffers and looking for new opportunities to plant trees. RCA would like to continue the work beyond the five miles of Rivanna River they’ve been focused on and bring in new partners who are also concerned about the tributary’s buffers. 

“We hope to expand,” said Wittenborn. “And when we do that, there will naturally be other organizations that join us.”