A high-quality tract of land has been added to Lake James State Park, east of Asheville, NC with the help of The Foothills Conservancy of North Carolina and grants from two conservation trust funds.
The property, in two parcels totaling 129 acres, features 8,900 linear feet of shoreline and a stunning view of the Linville Gorge. The Foothills Conservancy aided in negotiations for the $1.74 million acquisition funded through the N.C. Parks and Recreation Trust Fund and the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund.
The property acquisition results in state ownership of the entire Long Arm Peninsula on the lake’s northern section. The Long Arm Peninsula and the Paddy’s Creek watershed, totaling 2,915 acres, were added to the state park in 2005 in a deal with Crescent Resources, the predecessor of Crescent Communities. The two small parcels were withheld from that agreement and had been inholdings within park boundaries.
“What a wonderful way to highlight the 100th anniversary of the State Parks with this remarkable gift,” said N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources Secretary Susan Kluttz. “We are grateful to the Foothills Conservancy and Crescent Communities for their generosity.”
Lake James State Park was established in 1987 and encompasses 3,644 acres on both the north and south shore of the lake. The park recorded 471,566 visitors in 2014.
Secretary Sally Jewell announced today that the Interior Department will launch a comprehensive review to identify and evaluate potential reforms to the federal coal program in order to ensure that it is properly structured to provide a fair return to taxpayers and reflect its impacts on the environment, while continuing to help meet our energy needs. This is another step along the path that President Obama announced to improve the way we manage our fossil fuel resources and move the country towards a clean energy economy.
The programmatic review will examine concerns about the federal coal program that have been raised by the Government Accountability Office, the Interior Department’s Inspector General, Members of Congress and the public. The review, in the form of a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS), will take a careful look at issues such as how, when, and where to lease; how to account for the environmental and public health impacts of federal coal production; and how to ensure American taxpayers are earning a fair return for the use of their public resources.
“Even as our nation transitions to cleaner energy sources, building on smart policies and progress already underway, we know that coal will continue to be an important domestic energy source in the years ahead,” said Secretary Jewell. “We haven’t undertaken a comprehensive review of the program in more than 30 years, and we have an obligation to current and future generations to ensure the federal coal program delivers a fair return to American taxpayers and takes into account its impacts on climate change.”
Over the last decade, the exotic forest pest, Hemlock Woolly Adelgid (HWA) has ravaged our southern Appalachian forests. Since the “arrival” of HWA in our area, Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy (CMLC) has been working to protect our native Eastern and Carolina hemlocks from this attack.
Hemlock Woolly Adelgid is a destructive pest that gravely threatens the eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) and the Carolina hemlock (Tsuga caroliniana). Accidentally introduced to North America from Japan, HWA was first found in the eastern United States near Richmond, Virginia in the early 1950s. The pest has now been established in eleven eastern states from Georgia to Massachusetts, causing widespread mortality of hemlock trees. As of 2015, 90% of the geographic range of eastern hemlock in North America has been impacted by HWA.
CMLC has taken a lead in initiating biological control efforts to protect both Eastern and Carolina hemlocks on conservation easement properties over a multi-county North Carolina area. Over the past 5 years, CMLC has released over 15,000 predator beetles on 40 different conservation properties.
Hemlock restoration is the process of restoring hemlocks and hemlock habitats to health and long-term recovery. The mechanism for this process is biological control of the invasive insect using a USDA-approved predator beetle (Sasajiscymnus tsugae, aka Sasi) that is the native HWA predator for this insect in its Japanese homeland.
On December 23, 2015 the Conservation Trust for North Carolina purchased two forested properties on the slopes of Saddle Mountain in Alleghany and Surry counties. To expand public recreation opportunities, CTNC intends to convey the properties to the state for inclusion in the Saddle Mountain portion of the Mitchell River Game Lands managed by the NC Wildlife Resources Commission.
The two properties contain portions of Mill Creek, rated as a trout stream and “High Quality Waters” by the NC Department of Environmental Quality. The protection of these properties will help preserve unpolluted tributaries and portions of the main stem of Mill Creek in the headwaters of the Fisher River, the drinking water supply for the town of Dobson. Further downstream, the Yadkin River provides drinking water for millions of residents in the North Carolina Piedmont, including Winston-Salem.
The Saddle Mountain properties are located approximately ¼-mile off the Blue Ridge Parkway near milepost 222 in Ennice. The properties are visible from sections of the Parkway near Fox Hunters Paradise Overlook, north of Saddle Mountain.
In 2005, CTNC purchased 251 acres on Saddle Mountain and conveyed it to the state, enabling expansion of the Mitchell River Game Lands to include the vast majority of the iconic Saddle Mountain. The project contributes to an ongoing, collaborative conservation initiative.
Stanback Hiking Trail was completed there in 2014, offering hikers the opportunity to enjoy expansive views of the Piedmont to the east and the Blue Ridge mountains to the west from the top of Saddle Mountain. The trail is accessible from Saddle Mountain Church Road.
A new study from the Yale School of Public Health links the chemicals used in fracking with potential reproductive and developmental problems. This isn’t exactly new — we’ve known for some time that fracking is connected with lowered sperm counts, as well as premature births and a host of other health issues. This particular study, however, raises concerns about wastewater in particular, which the researchers found is even more toxic than the chemicals used in fracking.
In the fracking process, water, sand and chemicals are pumped underground and force the release of the natural gas, [study author Nicole] Deziel said. But, in addition to the natural gas, wastewater surfaces, which contains leftover chemicals that were pumped down as well as other potentially harmful substances such as lead and arsenic.
“What comes back up is actually more toxic than chemicals that went down,” Deziel said.
Researchers analyzed public data available on 1,021 chemicals that are used in fracking with the main goal of identifying the most toxic chemicals used in the process. And the most toxic chemicals used have links to reproductive and developmental health problems.
So, stick that in your well and frack it.
The armed terrorists that are entering their second week occupying a wildlife refuge in Oregon might be in favor of states taking over ownership of public lands, but Westerners as a whole aren’t, according to a new poll.
The poll, released January 11, 2016 by Colorado College, surveyed voters in seven western states (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming) on their views regarding public lands and energy. It found that most western voters — 58 percent — don’t want states to take over management of public lands. That’s one of the main desires of Ammon Bundy and the rest of the group that’s occupying the Malheur Wildlife Refuge — to turn federally protected lands over to private and state ownership, which the group thinks would help open up these lands to more drilling, mining, and grazing.
What residents in the West are concerned about, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said, are things like drought — a strong majority of voters in all seven western states considered drought a “serious” problem, according to the poll. The poll found that western voters were also concerned about lack of funding to maintain public lands, as well as climate change and wildfires.
“Westerners want our public lands to stay public,” Salazar said. Public lands — including national parks, monuments, and wildlife refuges — are a huge reason why people visit the West, he said. Seventy-two percent of voters polled said they thought that public lands helped the western economy, and 80 percent said they would support future presidents creating new national monuments.
Travelers — especially drone enthusiasts — should know that public park policies vary widely when it comes to unmanned aircraft. Before you send anything aloft — or holler in protest about somebody else’s aircraft — it’s wise to do some homework.
Besides the Federal Aviation Administration’s restrictions on small unmanned aircraft, many parks have their own restrictions. However, some public agencies are moving much faster than others on this subject.
If you’re headed for a national park, for instance, the answer is simple: Drones are banned until the National Park Service comes up with a long-term policy. That ban covers not only the 59 full-fledged national parks but about 350 national monuments, seashores and other sites run by the NPS, about 84 million acres in all.
The provisional ban dates to 2014 when, citing safety and noise issues, NPS Director Jon Jarvis issued a no-drones policy. The temporary ban carries a maximum penalty of a $5,000 fine and six months in jail.
NPS spokesman Jeffrey Olson said the agency will probably offer a draft administrative rule to update the policy this summer, with a final rule likely to take effect a few months later.
Although bald eagles live throughout the continental United States, Alaska, with about 50,000 eagles, has the most. Ideal bald eagle habitat consists of mature shoreline forests with scattered openings and little human use, near water with abundant fish and waterfowl.
The phrase “eagle eye” describes the highly developed visual ability of bald eagles, which can spot a moving rabbit almost a mile away. An eagle, flying at 1,000 feet altitude, can spot prey across almost 3 square miles.
Before European settlers sailed to America’s shores, there may have been 500,000 bald eagles on the continent. Their population fell to endangered levels of fewer than 420 pairs in the lower 48 states by the early 1960s. Today, there are more than 6,400 nesting pairs. Because bald eagle populations have revived, the US Fish and Wildlife Service upgraded the eagle’s status from “endangered” to “threatened” with extinction in 1995.
Bald eagles feed primarily on fish, waterfowl, seagulls and carrion and occasional other animals. Eagles’ talons close instantly on their prey and can’t be opened again until the eagle pushes down on a solid surface.
Bald eagles can fly about 65 miles per hour. They can soar to altitudes of 10,000 feet, staying aloft for hours using natural wind currents and thermal updrafts.
The National Park Service handled a record number of visitors in 2015 and park crowding has achieved epic proportions at some of Utah’s marquee destinations.
But crowding can be reduced through smart planning and outreach that spreads use into less busy times and less visited places, according to director Jonathan Jarvis. Not so easily fixed, he said, is young adults’ apparent lack of interest in the nation’s natural, historic and cultural treasures that Jarvis’ agency oversees.
As the NPS approaches its second century this August, the Department of Interior will oversee a series of events, programs and initiatives to connect with the millennial generation, whose members range in age from roughly 18 to 35.
“The goal is not just a celebratory birthday cake, but focuses on what’s the next century of the National Park Service going to be about and how do we engage the next generation in taking care of the parks,” Jarvis said. He’s concerned that millennials, not as connected to the outdoors as their parents and grandparents, may be far less inclined to support a system that has been heralded as “America’s Best Idea.”
“If the park service doesn’t build a new constituency, our longer term future is at risk, to be blunt about it,” said Jarvis. “This particular industry also needs to build a new constituency.”
Aiding in this mission is the National Park Foundation, which has hired a Madison Avenue advertising firm to conduct research. The foundation is looking to survey millennials in 2017 and compare responses garnered in a 2011 survey. Racial minorities also remain less engaged with the parks, a trend the foundation seeks to reverse.
Yet lack of interest seems like a distant problem now, with visitation hitting a record 300 million — nearly equivalent to the United States population. Utah’s five national parks all beat records that were set the previous year.
Ammon Bundy and his band of terrorists have pissed off a lot of people since they took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon, last week. Liberals, conservationists, and Black Lives Matter activists are all avowed foes. Now add another powerful group to the list: birders.
“Just a friendly warning from the birding and wildlife photography community to the Oregon terrorists,” wrote professional wildlife photographer Kevin Vang in a widely shared post on Daily Kos. “We are watching your every move, and we have been watching you for a long time.”
The Malheur refuge, it turns out, has long been recognized as one of the premier birding sites in the West. The wildlife refuge was created in 1908 by Teddy Roosevelt to ensure native heron weren’t extirpated for their feathers, then a fashionable item. Today, the 187,757-acre refuge is home to over 320 bird species, plus a few dozen mammals, too.
“Everybody in the birding community is quite outraged,” Vang says. His post struck a chord. The piece quickly moved to the top of the Daily Kos’ recommended list and since then he’s fielded calls from the BBC, CBC, and NPR. Vang says he’s surprised by the attention but believes his message is important. As a wild life photographer, he says that he consistently witnesses illegal activities in the wilderness, from trapping to poaching and arson.
Missoulians often mistake Douglas fir trees for elk — a fact that would amuse David Douglas to no end.
Had he made it to the Missoula Valley in Montana during his botanical explorations in the 1820s, the elk on Mount Jumbo would have no Douglas fir saplings to mingle with. Salish Indians regularly burned the mountainsides to deny ambush cover to Blackfeet Indians as they traveled through the vicinity. The only black spots in the winter range would be foraging ungulates, not invading evergreens.
Today, the tree that bears Douglas’ name frequently winds up in the news. It’s one of the main targets in the Lolo National Forest’s Marshall Woods project in the Rattlesnake National Recreation Area. It’s also been targeted by Missoula Parks and Recreation forestry management efforts.
Ponderosa pine trees tend to shed their lower branches as they mature, and their bark has a flaky, puzzle-piece formation. Those bark flakes shed off during forest fires, protecting the core of the pine and making it harder for the flames to reach the higher branches. In contrast, Douglas fir torches easily. But it grows back much faster than Ponderosa or larch.
Lolo forest silviculturalists made the same observation in their plans to thin forest areas and meadows along Rattlesnake Creek north of Missoula. Douglas fir saplings have mixed with aspen stands and encroached on old homestead sites. The Marshall Woods project proposes extensive thinning along the creek corridor.
Future generations will look back on our tepid response to global climate disruption and wonder why we did not act sooner and more aggressively. Climate change will adversely impact present and future generations, as well as all species on Earth. Our moral obligation to protect life requires us to act.
Yet even after the recently completed United Nations climate conference, we are still on track for dangerous levels of climate change. Why haven’t we acted sooner or more aggressively? One answer can be found in the split over the veracity of climate science.
Recent scholarship documents the coordinated efforts of conservative foundations and fossil fuel corporations to promote this uncertainty. Amplified by conservative media, this campaign of disinformation and omission has significantly altered the nature of the public debate and led to political polarization around the issue, making meaningful legislative action nearly impossible.
When vested interests with outsize economic and cultural power distort the public debate by introducing falsehoods, the integrity of our deliberations is compromised. Such seems the case today when we consider the fossil fuel industry’s role in distorting discourse on the urgent topic of climate change. If vested economic interests and public relations firms can systematically alter the national debate in favor of their own interests and against those of society as a whole, then the notion of democracy and civic morality is undermined.
Lovers of Canada’s national parks are celebrating the country’s 150th birthday a little earlier than most after purchasing park passes and realizing they don’t expire until 2018.
It’s part of an initiative brought in by the Liberal government that will make park access free for all users in 2017 and for youth and new Canadians starting in 2018.
Catherine McKenna, the minister of the environment and climate change, who’s responsible for overseeing Canada’s parks, had the plan laid out in her ministerial mandate letter.
“Make admission for all visitors to National Parks free in 2017, the 150th anniversary of Confederation,” reads the letter. “Beginning in 2018, ensure that admission for children under 18 is free, and provide any adult who has become a Canadian citizen in the previous 12 months one year’s free admission.”
Most funding for Parks Canada’s roughly $670-million annual budget comes from the federal government, but the agency also generates its own revenue from a variety of sources, including entrance fees, camping and recreation fees, rentals and concessions.
Just like public parks in major cities get crowded as soon as temperatures hit high 60s, national parks get busy during the summer. But consider the possibility of enjoying nature when it’s a lot less packed and just as beautiful in the winter.
You may even find trading your hiking boots for new skis or snowshoes refreshing. The colder weather and the snow make going to a natural park a completely different experience. The busy trails are now calm retreats, and the white fine fluff covering the landscape shows you another side of nature’s splendor.
Whatever your reasoning may be, certain places should absolutely not be overlooked just because it’s winter, and sitting by the fireplace is warm and comfy.
The Helena and Lewis & Clark national forests in Montana have officially consolidated. The announcement comes after several years of combining positions and sharing resources across both forests, most notably in leadership with a shared supervisor and deputy supervisor. The public should notice little difference following the announcement and no offices will be closed or relocated, said Forest Supervisor Bill Avey.
Becoming one forest is only the latest in a long history of administrative changes, Avey said. The Lincoln Ranger District in the Helena National Forest was once part of the former Missoula National Forest. In the 1930s, the former Jefferson National Forest was consolidated into the Lewis & Clark. “So becoming the ‘Helena-Lewis & Clark National Forest’ is just another evolution, and one that we have been preparing for over the past couple of years,” he said.
Offices will be maintained in Helena with the supervisor, and in Great Falls with the deputy supervisor, Avey said.
“Right now we’re working on putting together the pieces of a draft plan where we’ll take a broad look at areas of the forest and begin to refine those,” said Erin Swiader, forest plan revision team leader.
Armed protesters have taken over a building in a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon, accusing officials of unfairly punishing ranchers who refused to sell their land. One of them is Ammon Bundy, the 40-year-old son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who is well-known for anti-government action.
The group is inside part of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, OR after gathering outside for a demonstration supporting Dwight and Steven Hammond, father and son ranchers who were convicted of arson. Prosecutors said the Hammonds set a fire that burned about 130 acres in 2001, to cover up poaching. The father and son were sentenced to five years in prison.
After the march on January 2, 2015, the terrorists broke into the refuge’s unoccupied building and refused to leave. Officials have said there are no government employees in the building. “We will be here as long as it takes,” Bundy said. “We have no intentions of using force upon anyone, (but) if force is used against us, we would defend ourselves.”
When asked what it would take for the terrorists to leave, Bundy did not offer specifics. He said he and those with him are prepared to stay put for days or weeks. “We feel that we will occupy this as long as necessary,” he said.
Minnesota winters are infamous, but ice and snow affected more than just the local culture. They also shaped the very ground on which the Twin Cities are built. The glacial history of the Twin Cities metro, 10,000 years old, can disappear beneath the carpet of roads and buildings covering the region. But a relief map showing the region’s topography leaves the glaciers’ fingerprints plain as day.
The Twin Cities terrain is shaped primarily by glaciers, both directly and indirectly. The area’s hills are largely glacial moraines — piles of sediment hundreds of feet high, bulldozed by advancing glaciers in the last ice age roughly 10,000 years ago.
Glaciers also explain why the Minnesota River’s valley is so much bigger and deeper than the Mississippi River’s, even though today the Mississippi is the much larger river.
One glacier melted into Lake Agassiz, “one of the largest, if not the largest, lakes in world history” in what is now the Red River Valley along the border with North Dakota. When that lake burst over the continental divide at Traverse Gap, a gushing torrent of water called Glacial River Warren carved a deep valley across the state from about 11,700 years ago to 9,400 years ago.
Under President Dwight D. Eisehower, the nation prepared for the 50th birthday of the National Park Service with a spending splurge that refurbished Independence Hall in Philadelphia and helped complete the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and the 469-mile Blue Ridge Parkway. This year, the world-famous system turns 100 and the celebration will be far more modest.
The Obama administration and Republican lawmakers have vastly different ideas about what to do. Both parties agree that the country’s national parks and historic sites could use some sprucing up. Their shared goal is to use the centennial to improve trails, visitor centers, campgrounds and other park features that need maintenance work.
The question is how much of a dent Congress will make in a system-wide maintenance backlog with an estimated $11.5 billion price tag.
President Barack Obama has recommended spending an additional $1.5 billion on the parks over a three-year period. Republican leaders in Congress have a smaller birthday present in mind.
Complaints about the backlog extend decades. For instance, President George W. Bush noted during a 2001 speech at Everglades National Park that “many parks lack the resources they need for basic care and maintenance.” He promised to restore and renew America’s national parks. At the time, the maintenance backlog stood at about $5.5 billion. The September 11 terror attacks would soon upend the nation’s spending priorities though.
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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