A phantom haunts Appalachia. Blurry trail camera pictures and occasional eerie screams in the forest keep the debate about the Eastern cougar’s existence alive among scientists and lay people, even after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared the elusive ghost cat extinct in 2011.
The Eastern cougar, Puma concolor cougar — also known as ghost cat, catamount, puma, painter, panther and mountain lion — once roamed Eastern North America from Canada to Florida. All but the Florida Panthers were wiped out by the early 1900s. Hunting by European settlers, loss of habitat and a decline in the white-tailed deer population — the cougar’s favorite meal — all played a part in its demise.
Myths surround these tawny predatory cats, which can grow up to 8 feet long and weigh in at 200 pounds. One is the notion that they are man killers. The truth is, a fatal accident with a white-tailed deer is many times more likely than a fatal cougar attack.
Cougar sightings east of the Mississippi River often turn out to be misidentifications of other wild animals or house pets, wandering western cougars, or captive cats that have escaped or been released.
“When somebody asked us about cougars, we didn’t say, ‘They’re not here,’” Tennessee Wildlife authorities say. “We said, ‘There’s never been good evidence that cougars are here.’ And then they misconstrue that to say, ‘The agency said there are no cougars here.”
The North Carolina Wildlife Federation has launched the Butterfly Highway – a statewide conservation initiative to help restore native pollinator habitats to areas impacted by urbanization, land use change and agriculture.
The goal of the initiative is to create a network of native pollinator plants to support butterflies, bees, birds and other pollen and nectar dependent wildlife. The network will include green spaces and pollinator gardens that will connect and thread throughout North Carolina to create The Butterfly Highway.
NCWF is working with the community, partners and supporters to add pollinator “pit stops” – areas that include native pollinator nectar and host plants – to residential yards, apartment balconies, libraries, community centers, parks and local businesses. There is no cost to join the Butterfly Highway network and register a garden or green space as a pollinator-friendly habitat.
Future Butterfly Highway efforts include engaging private landowners and public lands in native meadow and river restoration projects. NCWF also is partnering with utilities and other agencies to include native grasses, pollinator nectar and host plants in right-of-ways and other large tracts of land to have a comprehensive impact.
Less than two weeks after the arrest of Cliven Bundy and the armed militants who were occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, the U.S. House of Representatives will consider three bills that would dispose of vast stretches of national forests and other public lands across the country.
The bills, which will be heard in a meeting of the House Natural Resources Committee on February 24, 2016, represent an escalation of the political battle being waged by the Koch brothers’ political network, anti-government extremist groups, and a small group of conservative politicians led by the committee’s chairman, U.S. Representative Rob Bishop (R-UT).
The first bill, introduced by Representative Don Young from Alaska (R), would allow any state to seize control and ownership of up to 2 million acres of national forests within its borders — an area nearly the size of Yellowstone National Park. A state would then be able to auction off the lands to private ownership or for mining, logging, and drilling.
The second bill, written by Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID), would give states and counties the right to take direct control of up to 4 million acres of national forests across the country for clear-cut logging, without regard to environmental laws and protections.
A third bill, written by Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT), would turn over what the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance estimates to be 6,000 miles of road right-of-ways on U.S. public lands to counties in Utah, opening the door for road construction and development in protected wilderness areas.
If you value outdoor recreation like hiking, mountain biking, kayaking, boating, hunting, fishing, rock climbing and horseback riding you better make your opinions known to your Congressional representatives, and you most definitely must vote in this year’s national election. Otherwise, the timber and oil corporations will own the national forests. Your recreation will be the last thing on their mind. Additionally, if you want your kids to have clean drinking water in the future the national forests are your best protection, not oil wells and fracking towers.
Even though spring is a month away, any warm ray of winter sunshine will get people out and about in the woods and streams, skipping stones and kicking up rocks.
But the U.S. Forest Service in Asheville is advising visitors to enjoy the river resources, just leave them as you find them – especially the rocks.
Rocks aren’t in rivers just for looking pretty or providing a step bridge across the stream for humans, they serve as vital habitat for many aquatic species, most notably the ancient and odd-looking hellbender salamander.
The largest salamander in North America, it can grow to 2 feet long. But the hellbender is on the North Carolina list of endangered species and the federal list of species of concern, said Lorie Stroup, fisheries biologist on the Pisgah National Forest.
“We want people to enjoy the rivers, but we want them to leave it as they found it. It’s one thing to skip a stone with your child,” Stroup said. “It’s another thing when you’re starting to move hundreds of rocks to build a dam or build some kind of chute to get a tube down.”
As we inch closer to spring, that’s what starts happening, she said, and why the Forest Service is getting ready to install more signs that say: “Don’t Move the Rocks! Moving rocks will destroy the homes of many important fish, insects and salamanders.”
Two areas of Joshua Tree National Park noted for their mining artifacts have been closed indefinitely because of looting, according to the park’s superintendent.
The areas include Carey’s Castle and El Sid Mine, in the Eagle Mountains range in the southeast area of the park.
The areas will be closed “at least for a month” until cultural artifact teams can inventory and record the areas, and while the park devises an enforcement and surveillance strategy, park Supt. David Smith said.
“We had some looting at El Sid that started a few months ago,” he said. “We actually bought some artifacts to replace the original ones and they got stolen, too.” Both sites harbor former miners’ homesteads.
Neither site attracted many but the most intrepid cross-country hikers, until a newspaper recently printed a two-page spread about day hiking to Carey’s Castle, Smith said. Soon after, the ranger’s office received six calls in one day about the site, compared with about that many visits by individual hikers per month, along with a few Sierra Club-sponsored group trips per year, he said.
The National Park Service has struggled with the abandoned mines on its properties – there are 531 mining-related features in Joshua Tree, of which about 58 still require protection measures. Death Valley contains more than 9,000 such features.
Amid the hullabaloo surrounding Apple’s decision to oppose a court order to help the FBI glean data from iPhones belonging to the San Bernardino, Calif., terrorists, you may have missed another big announcement from the company. Apple issued a package of bonds worth $1.5 billion for projects related to clean energy, the largest “green bond” ever issued by a corporation.
The Cupertino, California-based tech giant said proceeds from the green bond sales will be used to finance renewable energy, energy storage and energy efficiency projects, green buildings and resource conservation efforts.
The basic idea is that Apple will be able to raise quick cash from investors, spend it on climate-savvy projects (like the field of solar panels that power Apple’s North Carolina data center), and then pay back the money with interest. “Green bonds” are rapidly gaining popularity with banks and institutional investors like university endowments and pension funds as a relatively safe and effective way to contribute to the fight against climate change.
A big sale of green bonds from a massive company like Apple could pave the way for other companies to follow suit, with the certainty that they’ll have customers for their bonds.
Sometimes the answers to big problems are staring you right in the face.
Solar energy is expanding rapidly across the United States – increasing more than 100-fold over the past decade. But, there are still many untapped opportunities to harness the nation’s nearly limitless solar potential. The United States has the technical potential to produce more than 100 times as much electricity from solar photovoltaic (PV) and concentrating solar power (CSP) installations as the nation consumes each year. Given our abundant solar resources, America must take advantage of untapped opportunities to install solar technologies – like using rooftops of large superstores and “big box” retail stores as hosts for clean electricity generation.
The roofs of these large stores are perfect locations for solar panels – they are largely flat and vacant and almost always fully exposed to the sun. The big box stores, large grocery stores and malls considered in this report account for 5 percent of electricity use in the United States. Solar panels produce energy that can offset this large electricity demand while contributing to a cleaner grid. Rooftop solar power also brings benefits to the communities in which it is situated. By producing electricity close to its final point of use, distributed rooftop power reduces costs and energy losses associated with electricity transmission and distribution.
According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the United States has the technical potential to generate enough electricity from rooftop solar installations alone to meet nearly a quarter of the nation’s electricity demand. The United States has more than 102,000 big box retail stores, supercenters, large grocery stores and malls with more than 4.5 billion cumulative square feet of available rooftop space on which solar panels could be installed.
The rooftops of America’s big box stores and shopping centers could host 62.3 gigawatts (GW) of solar photovoltaic capacity, equivalent to the amount of electricity used by more than 7 million average U.S. homes or more than 7,500 average Walmart stores, and more than triple the solar photovoltaic capacity that has been installed in the U.S. to date.
President Theodore Roosevelt was reelected in 1904, the same year rangers started counting national park visitors. There were more than 120,000 visits to America’s 11 national parks in the first year of counting. This week, the National Park Service (NPS) certified 2015 national park visitation at more than 307 million. It also released its popular Top 10 list of the most visited national park sites.
“The popularity of national parks is well known, but last year’s numbers really are extraordinary,” said National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis. “As the National Park Service celebrates its 100th year, we’re preparing to welcome more visitors than ever including a new generation of park supporters and advocates who are discovering their own national park adventures.”
Today’s figures were an increase from the unofficial visitation total of 305 million reported by the NPS in January. The difference is attributed to the recently-completed NPS visitation audit.
2015 visitation highlights include:
307,247,252 recreation visits, a 4.9 percent increase over 2014 and the previous record of 292.8 million recreation visits.
371 of the 410 parks in the National Park System report visitation.
57 of the 371 reporting parks set a new record for annual recreation visits. Eleven parks had more than 5 million recreation visits in 2015.
Notable park milestones in 2015
Joshua Tree National Park surpassed 2 million annual recreation visits for the first time.
Rocky Mountain National Park surpassed 4 million annual recreation visits for the first time.
Yellowstone National Park surpassed 4 million annual recreation visits for the first time.
Grand Canyon National Park surpassed 5 million annual recreation visits for the first time.
Glacier National Park surpassed 100 million total recreation visits (1910 to 2015)
Top 10 Visitation
All Units of the National Park System
Blue Ridge Parkway – 15,054,603
Golden Gate National Recreation Area – 14,888,537
Great Smoky Mountains National Park – 10,712,674
Lincoln Memorial – 7,941,771
Lake Mead National Recreation Area – 7,298,465
George Washington Memorial Parkway – 7,286,463
Gateway National Recreation Area – 6,392,565
Natchez Trace Parkway – 5,785,812
Vietnam Veterans Memorial – 5,597,077
Grand Canyon National Park – 5,520,736
National Parks
Great Smoky Mountains National Park – 10,712,674
Grand Canyon National Park – 5,520,736
Rocky Mountain National Park – 4,155,916
Yosemite National Park – 4,150,217
Yellowstone National Park – 4,097,710
Zion National Park – 3,648,846
Olympic National Park – 3,263,761
Grand Teton National Park – 3,149,921
Acadia National Park – 2,811,184
Glacier National Park – 2,366,056
Two brothers spent more than three weeks in Zion National Park to put together a 4-minute video that shows some of the park’s many vistas. Filmmakers Jim and Will Pattiz, who are from outside Atlanta, spent 24 days in the park and shot footage at 16 different sites.
The stunning video is part of a project they started called More Than Just Parks, an attempt to draw awareness to the country’s national parks. The Zion video is the sixth in their series. Meanderthals has featured them in the past.
“Zion is one of the most unique and singularly spectacular parks in the the national park system,” Jim Pattiz said in an email. “Seeing it in the fall, with its brilliant display of yellow cottonwoods set against the dazzling Vermillion Cliffs of Zion Canyon is nothing short of amazing.”
Celebrate Earth Day, April 23, 2016 with these two “feel-good” Springtime Fundraising Events at Tryon Estates that will help Pacolet Area Conservancy preserve more of our mountains, farms, forests, waterways & greenspaces!
5K PACRun begins at 8:00 a.m., 7 – 7:45 a.m. Onsite Registration, or pre-register online at: strictlyrunning.com
PACWalk, suitable for everyone with three levels, begins at 10:00 a.m. PACWalk is a pet friendly event.
1) PACWalk – 2 mile walk/jog around the lake & through the woods, some gentle hills
2) The Sam White Stroll – easy/breezy ¾ mile stroll around the lake
3) Phantom Walk – Use your imagination to support conservation without walking!
9 – 9:45 a.m. – Check in & Onsite Registration, 10 a.m. – PACWalk Start Time. Please pre-register at their office or with a form available online at www.pacolet.org.
Registration: $20 if received by April 8, 2016; guaranteed a t-shirt. $25 Late Entry, for PACRun, if received after April 8, 2016, including the day of the event; t-shirts for late entries available until we run out.
Start forming your PACWalk teams now. They are still looking for business and individual sponsors. Awards and a free luncheon following the event, with special recognition of sponsors.
President Obama has set aside more of America’s lands and waters for conservation protection than any of his predecessors, and he is preparing to do even more before he leaves office next year. The result may be one of the most expansive environmental and historic-preservation legacies in presidential history.
On Friday, February 12, 2016 Obama designated more than 1.8 million acres of California desert for protection with the creation of three national monuments: Castle Mountains, Mojave Trails and Sand to Snow. The new monuments will connect three existing sites — Death Valley and Joshua Tree national parks and the Mojave National Preserve — to create the second-largest desert preserve in the world. Namib-Naukluft National Park in Namibia is the largest.
The big question: What next?
Other possible future designations include Bears Ears, a sacred site for several Native American tribes in southeastern Utah; Stonewall, the site of a 1969 inn riot by members of New York City’s gay community; the New England Coral Canyons and Seamounts; the historic headquarters of the National Woman’s Party, Sewall-Belmont House in Washington, D.C.; and Nevada’s Gold Butte, an area where rancher Cliven Bundy and his supporters have defied federal authorities.
Nearly four months of environmental contamination and civic disruption in Porter Ranch, California came close to an end February 11, 2016 when work crews pierced the underground casing of the damaged Aliso Canyon gas well and started injecting it with a mud-like compound.
“The well is no longer leaking,” said Jimmie Cho, senior vice president of gas operations and system integrity for Southern California Gas Co.
The final step is for concrete to be pumped into the well, a process that has begun, and for state regulatory officials to declare that the leak has ceased.
Residents were already beginning to notice one major difference: No more gas odor that has driven so many from their homes.
For the nearly 5,000 households that moved out of Porter Ranch alarmed about health risks from the leak, the news brings mixed relief.
It’s a moment of celebration, said Paula Cracium, president of the Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council, but there still is a lot of work ahead. “It changes from controlling the crisis to now navigating recovery,” Cracium said.
The political network of the conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch signaled last week that it is expanding its financial and organizational support for a coalition of anti-government activists and militants who are working to seize and sell America’s national forests, monuments, and other public lands.
The disclosure, made through emails sent by the American Lands Council and Koch-backed group Federalism in Action to their members, comes as the 40-day armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon is winding to an end. With the surrender of the last occupiers on February 11, 2016, the arduous task of forensics and cleanup begins.
recent organizational changes reveal that the Koch network is providing direct support to the ringleader of the land grab movement, Utah state representative Ken Ivory, and has forged an alliance with groups and individuals who have militia ties and share extreme anti-government ideologies.
The expanded window into the Koch network’s support for the land transfer movement opened on February 3, 2016, when the American Lands Council (ALC) (a group whose goal is to pass state-level legislation demanding that the federal government turn over publicly owned national forests and other public lands) announced that Ivory would be stepping down as its president to join a South Carolina-based group called Federalism in Action (FIA).
On an average morning thousands of North Carolinians wake up to the sight of a dusting of snow on area mountaintops. And while individuals can own much of the land, the state’s 25 land conservancies are working to protect the views for everyone to enjoy.
They’re guided by the principle advocated by Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote “None of us owns the landscape,” in his essay “Nature.”
Pam Torlina, director of stewardship and land protection with the Pacolet Area Conservancy, says everyone owns the view. “They do belong to us,” she says. “Such a big part of our sensory experience is visual and so by protecting these places, it protects the signature of our rural communities.”
Land conservancies in North Carolina have protected tens of thousands of acres of land with the help of public and private funding.
“They are so important to the peace and tranquility that we always find in place, when it’s taken away, it ruins it for us,” she says. “Sadly a lot of times the developers move so much quicker than land trusts can.”
The U.S. Forest Service plans to conduct a 120-acre prescribed burn in the Grandfather Ranger District, Pisgah National Forest, on Thursday, February 11, 2016.
The agency will conduct the one-day burn near the Woodlawn Township, north of Marion, NC along the Clinchfield Railroad. The objective of the burn is fuel reduction.
The Forest Service is conducting the burn as part of the Grandfather Restoration Project, a 10-year project designed to restore 40,000 acres of the Grandfather Ranger District. The project is restoring fire-adapted ecosystems by enhancing conditions for a variety of native plants and wildlife, controlling non-native species, and protecting hemlocks against hemlock woolly adelgids.
The Mountains to Sea Trail from Dobson Knob Road to the footbridge over the North Fork of the Catawba River will be closed during operations.
The safety of the public and firefighters is the highest priority during a prescribed burn. The public is asked to heed signs posted at trailheads and roads and to stay away from burn areas and closed roads and trails.
The NC Forest Service and The Nature Conservancy are assisting in the prescribed burn.
North Carolina environmental regulators fined Duke Energy $6.6 million this week for the company’s role in a 2014 coal ash spill that sent millions of gallons of contaminated water into the state’s Dan River. If you ask me, that isn’t nearly enough when you consider one study from 2015 estimated the ecological, recreational, aesthetic, and human health damages from the spill totaled $295,485,000. And that study looked at only the first six months after the spill, meaning the total damage could end up being higher.
The fine covers violations Duke Energy pleaded guilty to in federal court last year. In February of 2014, 39,000 tons of coal ash — a toxic byproduct of coal burning that can contain lead, mercury, and arsenic — and 27 million gallons of contaminated water leaked from a storage pond at a closed Duke power plant in North Carolina into the Dan River. It was later discovered that Duke was warned about the potential for leaks from the storage pond before the spill occurred, but the company ignored these warnings.
The fine was handed down to the company by North Carolina’s Department of Environmental quality, and joins the $2.5 million settlement Duke agreed to with the state of Virginia, which was also impacted by the spill. It also joins the $102 million in fines and restitution related to the spill Duke agreed to pay in May of last year.
Frank Holleman, senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, said that seeing Duke fined for the disaster isn’t the main thing his group is concerned about. “A fine like this against a multi-billion dollar company like Duke is nearly symbolic,” he said. “We really are not interested in fines. We’re interested in preventing disasters so that no fines will ever have to be assessed.”
Artists have long had an impact on our perceptions of national parks. Dramatic photographs, paintings, and essays helped stimulate the establishment of many park sites and continue to foster an appreciation of them today. Artists interpret the American landscape using traditional and contemporary approaches. They share the national park experience in ways that bring enjoyment, appreciation and a sense of connection to special places that many people may not have an opportunity to visit.
The Artist-in-Residence program offers an opportunity for artists to pursue new creative endeavors while immersed in the rugged mountain landscape, rich cultural heritage and wealth of biological diversity at Great Smoky Mountains National Park. In turn, selected artists continue the long tradition of interpreting resources in ways that enrich the park experience for today’s visitors and leave lasting impressions for future generations.
GSMNP seeks writers, musicians, craftsmen, composers, painters, sculptors, photographers, storytellers, performance artists, and videographers who’s work is engaged in issues that are relevant to the park’s interpretive themes.
The program provides time for artists to develop a body of work, as well as opportunities to engage and inspire the public through outreach initiatives. In exchange for their stay in the park, the artist creates new work and generates experiences that promote visitor understanding of the need to preserve and care for this national treasure.
I needn’t tell you North Dakota is not the first place people consider when asked about national parks. Far from it. Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon—these are the places most people picture when questioned by friends and coworkers about memorable places and bucket list destinations. Who could fault them? Americans and people worldwide are flooded with photographs of these and other of the United States’ most cherished lands and places of shared heritage.
To care for these places, Congress in 1916 created the National Park Service, one of the country’s most beloved institutions. During this year’s 2016 Centennial, all visitors to our national parks—in 2014, a record 292.8 million of them—can discover and learn about the many struggles and triumphs of the citizens who committed to protecting what they valued most: the nation’s lands and heritage. The statistics alone are remarkable: as of 2015’s end, 409 national parks; 49 national heritage areas; more than 2,500 national historic landmarks; 597 national natural landmarks; 43,162 miles of shoreline; 85,049 miles of rivers and streams; and more than 75,000 archeological sites.
But that’s not all. Our nation’s parks are places where Americans can honor and remember the lost, those who fought and died to protect their lands and traditions, the values they cherished most. In Montana and the Dakotas alone it includes the Assiniboine, Crow, Cree, Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Dakota, and Lakota. Members of these tribes traded furs for manufactured goods at Fort Union trading post, which 50 years ago this year MonDak-area residents helped to protect as a national historic site. Still others lived in the towns now preserved in central North Dakota’s Knife River Indian Villages, also a national historic site. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, members of these tribes sacrificed their lives to defend their northern plains homes and families, just as they have in World War II, Vietnam, and more recent wars.
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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