Tag: Wildlife
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Studies Offer Insights into Behaviors of Park Bears
By Steve Kemp
Four research projects focused on bears in the Great Smoky Mountains are currently underway or have recently been completed. Of the four, the results of two are troubling, one is encouraging, and on the last it’s too early to tell.
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Science at Sugarlands Features Wildflowers
By Frances Figart
You couldn’t pick a more perfect month than May to head out on the trails to spot wildflowers. to help you learn more about them, Discover Life in America will host Wildflowers: Gems of the Smokies at the Sugarlands Visitor Center Friday, May 17, from 1–3 p.m.
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Presidential Pets & the Great Smoky Mountains
The White House has been home to more pets than people over its long history. First Pets have ranged from the commonplace, like Bo, President Obama’s Portuguese water dog, to the Scottish terriers, English springer spaniel, and cat that President George W. Bush. Others have included the bizarre and downright dangerous, such as the zebra kept by Theodore Roosevelt and the alligator, a gift from the Marquis de Lafayette, that John Quincy Adams kept in a White House bathroom.
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Gearing up, Branching out
Every spring people flock to the Smokies to view our park’s spectacular displays of wildflowers that begin blooming at the lower elevations and creep uphill as the temperatures warm and days grow longer.
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Fighting Creek Nature Trail
Note: Originally posted in January 2014. Reposted here with permission from the author.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park was my hiking destination yesterday. Leaving Asheville at 9 a.m., I traveled to Gatlinburg for a meeting with Todd Witcher, executive director for Discover Life in America, a nonprofit organization that manages a thorough scientific inventory of all the park’s species that has been going on for the past 15 years.
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A swinging railroad bridge in Elkmont? I had no idea!
Anyone who has spent time in the Great Smoky Mountains can appreciate the rugged beauty of this Southern Appalachian range. Steep mountainsides, craggy gorges and boulder-strewn waterways are part and parcel of the landscape.
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My last Experience Your Smokies
For my last Experience Your Smokies, our class visited the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont and the National Park Service Collections Preservation Center in Townsend, TN. Appropriately, the focus of our day was on the value of experiential and outdoor learning.
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The big and small of it
This month, my Experience Your Smokies class got another peek behind the curtain of park operations and traveled to Twin Creeks Science Center to fish out aquatic invertebrates.
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Finding solitude, wildflowers on park's Quiet Walkways
There's nothing better than waking up in the morning and driving to work inside a national park. Even in July and October, when the park's seams feel as of they might burst with visitors, working on behalf of the Smokies is the best job I've ever had.
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Things get wild at EYS
On a foggy morning just off U.S. 441/Newfound Gap Road, a park ranger’s truck was spotted hauling an olive green culvert to the back of Chimney Tops picnic area. A few folks had gathered to eat an early lunch and take photos of the river. Two rangers approached the group and pose the following question: “Would you like to see a bear today?”
The thrilled visitors surrounded the culvert at the rangers’ request. To their delight, the rangers opened the culvert door and a young male black bear bolted up the mountain, heading deep into the woods.
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