Southern Appalachian Creature Feature

For the fifth time in ten years, North Georgia’s Tallulah Gorge will see a prescribed fire, as part of an effort to restore and maintain wildlife habitat in and along the two-mile-long canyon.

Culminating a 20-year partnership with the state of Oregon, the Army Corps of Engineers, and private landowners, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently proposed removing the Oregon chub from the federal endangered species list. If it goes through, this would be the first fish delisted due to recovery. Fewer than 1,000 fish were known to exist when it was placed on the endangered species list. Today, the population stands at more than 150,000 fish.

Western North Carolina hikers can now enjoy three new trails near the Blue Ridge Parkway, thanks to private citizens, The Conservation Fund, the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy and the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission.

Red wolves are the wolves of the south. They could once be found from Texas, across the south, and up the Atlantic coast. However, due to eradication efforts and habitat loss, they nearly became extinct. In a last-ditch effort to save the species, an attempt was made to capture all remaining wild red wolves. Of the 17 captured, 14 became the founders of a zoo-based breeding program. Although the release of propagated wolves was tried and failed in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, is has been a success in the swampy low country of eastern North Carolina, where about 100 red wolves roam. Nearly 200 additional red wolves are in captivity and part of the managed breeding program. You can see these animals for yourself at the Western North Carolina Nature Center in Asheville.

The story goes that fall foliage was such a vibrant red that someone likened it to the devil’s britches. The name stuck to the Devil’s Britches hiking trail and now Devil’s Britches IPA is the name of the latest beer in Highland Brewing Company’s seasonal line-up. Highland Brewing has established a strong tradition of naming their seasonal beers after area mountain features, which segued nicely into a partnership with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy, a local land trust which has done much to protect high-elevation land in the area.

Oftentimes in endangered species conservation, we’re faced with a situation where you have a small, and vulnerable population of imperiled plants or animals, but you have a large, healthy population elsewhere, or you can successfully propagate and raise them in captivity. In these situations, one of the most basic conservation tools is augmentation – assuming the habitat is okay, you augment the small, vulnerable population with individuals from the large, healthy population, or from those propagated in captivity.

I was recently passing through Atlanta with a friend, who happens to be a bird biologist, and an avid recreational birder. It was her first time in the city, and as we approached it along the interstate, she looked up at skyscraper after skyscraper, most covered with glass, and she exclaimed simply, “I’ll bet a lot of birds die here.”

The tiny fish in the water-filled plastic bag wouldn’t catch the eye of the casual observer, but to biologists they were part of a great hope. The fish were spotfin chub, a tiny, threatened fish, and these were carefully reared in a fish hatchery and bagged for transport and release into the Cheoah River where hopefully they would thrive.

Of the highest 41 peaks is in the Eastern United State, 40 are in the Southern Appalachians. These peaks are effectively mountaintop islands, rising above lower elevations to be outposts of cold, often moist, habitat where fir, spruce, and others trees associated with more northern climates, live.

Citing concerns over declines in wild ginseng, the supervisor of the Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests is limiting ginseng harvest in those areas. A permit is required to harvest wild ginseng on National Forests, and it must be collected during a designated harvest season.