National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis will be in South Carolina Thursday, December 15, 2016 at the invitation of U.S. Representative James E. Clyburn (D-SC) to hear comments on proposals to add Reconstruction Era sites in Beaufort County to the National Park System. The Reconstruction Era began during the Civil War and lasted until the dawn of Jim Crow racial...
Learn MoreThe world’s air conditioner is on the fritz. Unprecedented, record-breaking warmth in the Arctic this year triggered declines in sea ice, snow, the Greenland ice sheet and a remarkable delay in the annual freeze of sea ice in the fall. Overall, the Arctic experienced its warmest year ever recorded. “Rarely have we seen the Arctic show a clearer, stronger or more...
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Every day, we all use and enjoy our national parks, creating fond memories of hiking, swimming, camping, and exploring with family and friends. In fact, nothing is more American than our national parks. For a limited time only, the 100th Anniversary of the National Park Service (NPS) Commemorative Coin Program honors the NPS and its first century of protecting,...
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While Donald Trump may not be able to destroy global climate action and the landmark 2105 Paris climate deal all by himself — as he pledged to do during the campaign — he probably could do that with help from Russia and the trillion-dollar oil industry. So much is explained by Trump’s Secretary of State choice. Media reports now say it will be Rex Tillerson, CEO of oil...
Learn MoreNewly published research by scientists at Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Colorado State University (CSU), and University of California-Berkeley finds that human recreation activities in protected areas are impacting wildlife, and more often than not, in negative ways. Nature-based, outdoor recreation is the most widespread human land use in protected areas and is...
Learn MoreThe area is the only national park that includes a part of the historic U.S. Route 66. Welcome to the Petrified Forest National Park. The word “forest” may mislead visitors. The park is in a desert. And the word “petrified” — which can mean “afraid” — may scare visitors away. But fear not. “Petrified Forest” gets its name from the trees that have, over...
Learn MoreHurricane Ivan would not die. After traveling across the Atlantic Ocean, it stewed for more than a week in the Caribbean, fluctuating between a Category 3 and 5 storm while battering Jamaica, Cuba, and other vulnerable islands. And as it approached the US Gulf Coast, it stirred up a massive mud slide on the sea floor. The mudslide created leaks in 25 undersea oil wells,...
Learn MoreWhen news broke that the Army Corps of Engineers would not grant a permit necessary for the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline to cross the Missouri River, the thousands of water protectors, environmental activists, and concerned citizens who spent months protesting the pipeline’s construction erupted in celebration. However, the Dakota Access pipeline, which would...
Learn MoreIt started with a 2011 study that indicated by the turn of the century there would be no more Joshua trees in the national park named after the iconic desert plant. And likely none in California. “I was shocked when the study came out. I wanted to look at the details and change the scale,” said Cameron Barrows, a research ecologist for the UC Riverside Center for...
Learn MoreA “doughnut hole” of contamination in North Carolina’s DuPont State Recreational Forest likely will be cleaned up in the coming year as a remediation plan moves forward. State officials held a public comment session on Thursday, Dec. 1, 2016 at the Transylvania County Public Library, but only a half dozen people attended and just one came forward to comment. Most...
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The Blue Ridge Parkway is the nation’s longest parkway, stretching 469 miles to connect Shenandoah National Park in Virginia with Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee. Created during the Great Depression, this national treasure spans 252 miles and 17 mountain counties in North Carolina. Lands along the Blue Ridge Parkway provide spectacular...
Learn MoreA plan to replace a 3.5-mile overhead power line with a solar array to deliver energy to communications equipment atop Mount Sterling in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is open for public comment through Dec. 13. The existing overhead line extends from the park boundary at N.C. 284, Mount Sterling Road, to the Mount Sterling Fire Lookout Tower in Haywood County....
Learn MoreU.S. military veterans continue to arrive at the snowy Standing Rock encampment to form a human shield between protesters and police. By Sunday, camp organizers say, about 2,000 vets will be on site. “Our goal is to stand there and if need be take the rounds for the First Nations people so they can do their thing,” said Mark Sanderson, a former Army Sergeant who served...
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Top officials of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last year made critical changes at the eleventh hour to a highly anticipated, five-year scientific study of hydraulic fracturing’s effect on the nation’s drinking water. The changes, later criticized by scientists for lacking evidence, played down the risk of pollution that can result from the...
Learn MoreFederal prosecutors say a North Carolina man is accused of setting two wildfires. The U.S. Department of Justice says 49-year-old Keith Eugene Mann Franklin was arrested Wednesday, November 30, 2016 on one count of destroying property by means of fire. According to an affidavit, a wildfire was reported on Oct. 27 inside the Nantahala National Forest in Macon County....
Learn MoreWhat writers don’t know about the world outweighs what we do know by a ratio of 100-1, at best. We get away with reporting the news as if we know something because, as Mark Twain noted, we do the legwork, we interview the colorful suspects, and we buy ink by the barrel. Then comes a sudden, confounding event like the Dakota Access Pipeline controversy at the Hunkpapa...
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Some good news for a change! The Party Rock Fire is now 100% contained. The much-needed rain over the region serves as a cool and refreshing sendoff for most of the departing fire crews. Crews came from far and wide to help contain the blaze. Oregon’s incident management team will return control of the fire back to the local North Carolina Forest Service district...
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White House chief of staff may be “the second most powerful job in government,” according to James A. Baker III, who had the job under both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. So it matters that the man Trump named his chief of staff, Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus, embraces Trump’s hard-core climate denial. Priebus appeared on the latest Fox News...
Learn MoreFanned by strong winds and the Southeast’s worst drought in nearly a decade, at least 14 fires burned in and around Gatlinburg, Tennessee, forcing evacuations from the popular tourist gateway and nearby communities. Gatlinburg Fire Chief Greg Miller said crews battled wind gusts of up to 70 mph. On Monday afternoon (November 28, 2016), a wildfire from the Smoky...
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U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, a fierce anti-public lands Republican in Utah, is urging President-elect Donald Trump to abolish national monuments created by both Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. More than 270 million acres of American land and waters are potentially at risk—an area two and half times the size of California. The action would be unprecedented. No...
Learn MoreRoughly 18% of China is given over to national parks or protected areas of some sort. But there is no overarching system for managing or even designating such places; instead, they are subject to a complicated, overlapping and haphazard mix of local, provincial and national administration. Laoshan is a case in point. Since its establishment in 1991, its official status...
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More than 6,300 firefighters from all over the U.S have been fighting forest fires that have now burned more than 119,000 acres in eight states across the Southeast, some of which have burned for over a month. The low humidity and lack of rain for more than three months in some areas has provided what Adam Rondeau from the inter-agency Southern Area Coordination Center...
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There’s nothing environmental about Black Friday. While one major outdoor retailer (REI) has elected to opt out of the day entirely, giving its employees a paid day off to spend outdoors, another has decided to opt in — but they’re doing things differently. This year, Patagonia will give 100 percent of its global proceeds from stores and online to grassroots...
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Dear CMLC Family, The Party Rock Fire has impacted our community, requiring some of you to evacuate your homes and endangering people, property and natural resources in the Hickory Nut Gorge. You are on our minds and in our hearts. Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy has held off up until now in sending out our own communications, while public officials have kept us all...
Learn MoreThe Mountain Valley Pipeline is a proposed high pressure natural gas pipeline that would run from Wetzel county, West Virginia to a processing station in Pittsylvania County, Virginia spanning 301 miles of public and private land. Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC has been contracted to do this work for various energy companies including EQT Midstream Partners, NextEra US...
Learn MoreForest managers have never seen anything like it. Across California, an astounding 102 million trees have died over the past six years from drought and disease — including 62 million trees in 2016 alone, the US Forest Service estimates. Once-mighty oaks and pines have faded into ghastly hues of brown and gray. The biggest worry is that these dead, dry forests will become...
Learn MoreThe head of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality sent a letter to President-elect Donald Trump last week, asking him to rein in the Environmental Protection Agency. The letter requests that Trump “return environmental leadership to the states,” “place a moratorium on currently proposed and new federal regulations,” “work with state governors and...
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Federal funding for the Blue Ridge Parkway has been flat in recent years, making it tougher to keep up with maintenance and litter control along the 469-mile road that traverses the highlands of Virginia and North Carolina. “The focus is more about how far those dollars go these days,” said parkway spokeswoman Leesa Brandon. “That gap gets a little bit bigger and harder...
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I am Jeff Clark, founder of Internet Brothers, producer of this blog, and passionate about hiking. I live in Western NC near the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains. Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests are just out my door, so the content will focus on these areas, but let me know what you would like to see on the site. 
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