Highlights include:

• Educational signage will be installed at Graveyard Fields, a popular hiking and jumping-off point to the Shining Rock Wilderness on mile 418, highlighting the place’s history and environmental significance. The signs will finish up a 2014 project to build a restroom and expand the parking lot at the site. 

• Hemlock trees along the Parkway will be treated to prevent their deaths due to hemlock wooly adelgid, an invasive insect that’s devastating hemlocks throughout the eastern U.S. Funds will also support a campaign to engage private landowners in the fight against the adelgid.

• Parks as Classrooms will continue to be funded, with Foundation dollars supplying staff to introduce 25,000 children each year to the natural wonders of the Parkway while meeting educational goals.  

• Research and training will work toward a variety of wildlife management goals. A crayfish survey by Appalachian State University and the National Park Service will identify species and threats along the Parkway, a wildlife forensics training will better equip rangers to reduce poaching, 35 wildlife cameras to be monitored by citizen scientists will be purchased and research to aid in wildlife management decisions for elk and wild boars will be funded. 

• Water fountains along the Parkway will be repaired and rebuilt. 

Since 1997, the Foundation has contributed more than $7 million to Parkway projects and programs.