The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation grant that made this map possible also provided the ability to scan freshwater Mussel shells so they can be used for 3-D printing of replicas. The featured photo is a collection of the shells from Virginia. Photo credit, CBF’s Joe Wood.
In October of 2024, The Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation released a new map that identifies potential habitats of native freshwater mussels. As part of a project funded by a grant from The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the GIS specialists at the DCR’s NHP created a mussel richness map of hotspots where planting native trees and plants along streams (also called riparian forested buffers, or RFBs) and implementing agricultural best management practices (Ag BMPs) could have the biggest benefit for clean water and mussel habitat. The map also indicates where existing forests that are important for water quality and mussel diversity might be targeted for protection.
Anyone can see the map by going to the Natural Heritage Data Explorer and selecting the “Potential Freshwater Mussel Richness” layer: https://vanhde.org/content/map. Once there, you can see which species of mussels might be in any given stream.
What’s cool, is that this tool allows agencies and organizations to prioritize restoration work where it could help save these amazing and imperiled animals. So, if you want to see where putting a RFB (or other Ag BMPs) on the ground could also benefit any of the 19 freshwater mussel species that occur in the Chesapeake Bay watershed of Virginia, check out this cool new tool.