Southern Appalachian Creature Feature

There was a joke going around recently about how we have the collective knowledge of humanity accessible through a device that fits in our pocket, which we mainly use to look at pictures of cats. It’s kind of amazing the frivolity that lies at the heart of most of our smart phone use. However, there are opportunities to use these tools to make this world a better place.

What happened to the Lost Colony at Roanoke? Where is the Lost Dutchman Mine? Did Lee Harvey Oswalt act alone? Where do Grandfather Mountain’s female bats go in the summer? Tremendous mysteries all.

Every five years the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service conducts a national survey providing a look at the level of participation and spending on wildlife-based recreation, such as hunting, fishing, and wildlife watching. It’s done at the request of all the state fish and wildlife agencies, and the actual questioning is done by the U.S. Census bureau, who spoke with more than 48,000 households in 2011. The results from this latest survey are beginning to come in.

Invasive species management is an on-going challenge for land managers as there always seem to be new or spreading outbreaks. On a recent afternoon, biologists working at a bog in Henderson County actually experimented with using a shop-vacuum to remove Japanese stilt-grass seeds, sadly to no avail. Also called Nepalese browntop or by its genus name, microstegium, in the United States, this Asian plant was first seen in the Knoxville area around 1919, and its suspected it was used as packing material for porcelain.

The Powell River flows southwest out of Virginia’s coal country and into east Tennessee, before its waters eventually flow into the Tennessee River, draining some of the most rural land in the Southern Appalachians.

Few children ever get the opportunity to wade into a stream, shoes on, while their teacher not only looks one, but encourages them. However, nearly every fifth grade student in Yancey and Mitchell counties recently had just that opportunity as they went out to the North and South Toe rivers for this year’s Toes in the Toe Discovery – an annual event that aims to get kids out of the classroom and to a river in their community for a day of learning.

Fall is upon us, and amid the leaf raking, firewood splitting, pumpkin harvesting, and other fall chores, this is an opportunity for planting shrubs and trees.

Invasive species are plants and animals that are not from here but have been introduced and are thriving in the absence of their natural controls, to the detriment of our native species. Their impacts is especially notable in the Southern Appalachians, as they’re responsible for the loss of the American chestnut, the current decline of hemlock trees, and patches of kudzu across the region. Japanese knotweed is another.

Yancey County’s South Toe River is one of the most beautiful in the Southern Appalachians. Its headwaters are protected by Pisgah National Forest and Mount Mitchell State Park and it flows through a sparsely developed landscape all the way to its confluence with the North Toe River.

Invasive exotic species are plants and animals that are not from here but have been introduced and are thriving in the absence of their natural controls, to the detriment of our native species. Kudzu is perhaps the most famous of these, a Japanese plant widely planted in the last century, but there are a host of others, including the chestnut blight that removed chestnuts from our Appalachian forests, the balsam woolly adelgid which has killed Fraser firs on our highest mountaintops, and the hemlock woolly adelgid which is killing hemlock trees.