After filling the position for nearly a year and a half without the ability to perform law enforcement duties, Greg Wozniak is gone from his position as Pisgah District Ranger on the Blue Ridge Parkway. 

Though just barely off the ground, a new hemp testing service launched in Asheville is receiving a markedly positive response from Western North Carolina farmers. 

“We’re definitely feeling pretty busy,” said Amanda Vickers, director of the US Botanical Safety Laboratory. “Our phone has started ringing a lot more since we announced this testing, and a lot of people are really excited to be able to hand deliver their samples. It’s looking like this is really something that there is a demand for.”

Commissioner Mickey Luker’s lack of attendance at county board meetings in recent months has spurred southern Jackson County residents to ask for Luker’s removal from office, with four people addressing commissioners during their Oct. 15 meeting with that request.

After a narrow vote and a delayed ratification, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians has a new budget for the 2020 fiscal year.

With early voting already underway and the Nov. 5 election just around the corner, two Sylva residents have declared their intention to run as write-in candidates for a seat on the town commission. 

After being banned since Sept. 26, backcountry campfires are once more allowed in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park as of Tuesday, Oct. 22.

If the United States’ outdoor recreation industry were its own country, it would be the world’s 25th largest economy. And, while towns like Moab and Boulder and Jackson Hole might have more name recognition on a nationwide scale, Western North Carolina has everything it takes to command a large piece of that hypothetical country’s pie.

The race for a seat on Sylva’s town board is competitive this year, with six people running for election to one of the three open seats. Two of them are incumbents, one is a former town commissioner and three are seeking elected office for the first time. Serving four-year terms extending through December 2023, the winners will govern during a pivotal time in Sylva’s history.

Legislation creating a Cannabis Commission that would set the stage for hemp production on the Qualla Boundary has been overturned, following a veto from Principal Chief Richard Sneed and a failed attempt from Tribal Council to override that veto. 

The Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy has purchased 62 acres at Doll Branch in the Highlands of Roan, an acquisition that adjoins the Cherokee National Forest and is less than half a mile from the Appalachian Trail.

The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission wants to know about pine snake sightings in North Carolina, found mostly in the southwestern mountain counties, the southern Coastal Plain and the Sandhills.

A 187-acre conservation purchase in Haywood County will allow for wildlife grazing and movement near Interstate 40.

Students in the HIGHTS program, which works with vulnerable youth and their families in Western North Carolina, learn about more than honey when they tend beehives through HIGHTS’ Bee Well program, which believes that bees are good tools for working with youth.

This year Sylva voters will be given a ballot listing six possible names for three open seats on the town’s board of commissioners, but following Danny Allen’s decision to leave the race, only five will belong to viable candidates.

After coming up short in the General Election Sept. 5, principal chief candidate Teresa McCoy filed an election protest Sept. 12 that the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Board of Elections dismissed in a Sept. 30 decision.

The Jackson County Board of Commissioners has gathered to conduct official business on 14 days since June began, but Commissioner Mickey Luker has been physically absent from these meetings more often than he’s been present. Now, his party would like to see him removed from his seat and replaced with somebody who will fill the chair more often.

Drought has deepened throughout Central and Western North Carolina, according to a new map published today.

It was an hour and a half after sunrise, and the day’s first rays had not yet touched Judaculla Rock, hidden away in a hollow near Caney Fork in Jackson County. 

“I would encourage you to come back at different times,” T.J. Holland, cultural resources supervisor for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, told the group assembled around him. “It’s one of these fascinating things — time of the year, time of day, weather all affects how this looks, and I’ve not been here twice that I’ve not seen something different.”

The Center for Domestic Peace — the successor to REACH of Jackson County — is hoping to take over domestic violence services in Jackson County by next summer. There’s still a long way to go to meet that goal, but board members say that getting the organization on its feet is a vital step toward addressing the issue locally. 

Sylva’s town board voted unanimously Sept. 12 to deny a petition from Dillardtown resident Aaron Littlefield to have his property voluntarily annexed into town limits. 

UPDATE: Principal Chief Richard Sneed vetoed this resolution on Oct. 2, after The Smoky Mountain News' press time. Tribal Council will hold a special session at 8:30 a.m. Friday, Oct. 4, to  hold a vote on whether to uphold or override the veto.

At its last meeting Sept. 12, Tribal Council voted to create the Cannabis Commission, a body that will work to get the tribe into the hemp business. 

After more than seven years at the helm, Dan Harbaugh has left his role as executive director of the Tuckasiegee Water and Sewer Authority. His last day was Friday, Sept. 27, with the TWSA board hiring former Town of Sylva Public Works Director Dan Shaeffer to lead the organization temporarily. 

A ban on backcountry fires in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was announced today following the release of a new drought map showing that 45 counties in central and western North Carolina are experiencing moderate drought.

Conservation leaders from across the state and nation gathered in Maggie Valley earlier this month to dedicate a land protection project that’s been in the works for a decade and a half — but is in many ways just beginning. 

The Conservation Fund now owns tracts of land totaling 710 acres in Maggie Valley’s Campbell Creek and Jonathan Creek watersheds, with work underway to transfer that property to the Maggie Valley Sanitary District for permanent conservation. Another 1,350 acres are in the pipeline for protection, with property owners having agreed to sell it once the money is there to buy it. 

Fitness has long been an important part of Angel Squirrell’s life, but in recent years she’s found renewed purpose by sharing it with others. 

It was close to Christmas 2015 when Mark Stein and Randy Doster opened The Meditation Center in Sylva, an oasis of calming music and inspirational décor in a small white house along N.C. 107. 

Plans are progressing for a new animal shelter in Jackson County, the first new construction to be completed in the $7.65 million vision for a revamped Green Energy Park campus. 

A Blue Ridge Parkway law enforcement supervisor who admitted to using illegal substances still retains his position as head ranger of the Parkway’s largest district, despite a March Board of Inquiry recommendation that his law enforcement commission be permanently revoked, according to records The Smoky Mountain News obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act. 

There are a few moments in history that every American alive at the time remembers in crisp detail. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The first moon landing. The terrorist attacks of September 11. 

All three bore significance during astronaut Charlie Duke’s visit to Western Carolina University last week, on the 18th anniversary of the twin towers’ collapse. Two years before his death in November 1963, Kennedy changed the course of American history when he pledged during a May 1961 speech that the United States would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. NASA met that challenge with just over four months to spare when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to set foot on the lunar surface, on July 20, 1969. 

Passing off mass-produced tchotchkes as authentic Native American crafts could soon be illegal in Cherokee following Tribal Council’s unanimous vote to approve the Native Arts and Crafts Act last week. 

The time to tweak plans for Sylva’s controversial N.C. 107 project is past, residents were told during a well-attended town meeting Thursday, Sept. 12. 

Five families could find themselves in a brand new home in Sylva if a planned endeavor by Mountain Projects comes to fruition. 

A lockdown at Southwestern Community College’s Jackson County campus has been lifted after law enforcement determined that students who reported a weapon on campus were mistaken.

Hometown hero Riley Howell’s legacy will live on in the form a 4-mile race through the streets of the town he once called home, with the event raising money to support victims of violent acts like the one that took 21-year-old Howell’s life on April 30. 

The Mighty Four Miler will be held in conjunction with the Gateway to the Smokies Half Marathon, which started in 2015 and added a 4-mile race in 2017. Neither race was held this year after event organizer Haywood County Chamber of Commerce decided to discontinue it, but endurance event company Glory Hound Events later took on ownership of the race. 

Jackson County hopes to offset the cost of moving its Dillsboro recycling center with proceeds from selling a piece of land in Sylva that has been county-owned since 2012.

Election Day dawned clear and sunny in Cherokee Sept. 5, with polls opening at 6 a.m. for voters to choose the tribe’s next chief, vice chief and Tribal Council. 

Principal Chief Richard Sneed produced a decisive victory in Cherokee’s Sept. 5 election, pulling in 55.11 percent of the vote against opponent Teresa McCoy, who took the remaining 44.89 percent. 

Richard Sneed will remain the principal chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians for four more years following an Election Day victory, according to unofficial results.

The Nantahala River in the Nantahala Gorge is now open to the public for all uses for the first time since landslides on Saturday, Aug. 24, resulted in significant damage and blockages in the area.

Beneath the woodsy world of tree trunks, ferns and leaf litter is another, hidden realm. It’s the world of fungi, where these shadow organisms — not plants, but yet not animals — spread their tendrils through the soil, through the moist decay of fallen branches, into the bark of standing trees, both living and dead. Where the two worlds meet is where the mushrooms grow.

Last year was a good one for the tourism industry in Jackson County, with visitor spending in 2018 increasing by 5.3 percent over 2017 numbers, according to recently released figures from the state tourism office Visit North Carolina.

With right-of-way acquisition for the N.C. 107 project in Sylva set to begin in January, the Tuckaseigee Water and Sewer Authority is hoping to adopt new policies this December aimed at assisting ratepayers impacted by the endeavor. 

The U.S. Forest Service is waiving fees at campgrounds across its southern region — which includes the Pisgah-Nantahala National Forest — for people displaced by Hurricane Dorian.

Due to hazardous conditions in the Nantahala Gorge from multiple landslides, the U.S. Forest Service is issuing an Emergency Closure Order prohibiting access to the Nantahala River. The closure is in effect for national forest land between Beechertown Launch Ramp and the Silvermine Take-out Ramp. This closure also applies to Ferebee Memorial Park.

Hazards created by recent landslides into the Nantahala River within the Nantahala Gorge have resulted in a suspension of all commercial rafting and kayaking operations, and a recommendation that individual paddlers avoid the area.

With a new school year just begun, the 300 students who participate in Waynesville Middle School’s robust agriculture program now have an array of new woodshop equipment at their disposal. 

“In two weeks this will be like Santa’s little helper’s woodshop,” Noal Castater, agriculture teacher at WMS since 2010, said in an interview the Friday before the first day of school. 

Housing is an issue across Western North Carolina, and Jackson County is no exception. Since June 2018, a newly created Housing Committee has been working toward solutions, and during an Aug. 13 work session the group showed county commissioners an early draft of a document to establish a housing trust fund for Jackson. 

After a closed session discussion during its Aug. 20 meeting, the Jackson County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to buy a pair of properties along Haywood Road in Dillsboro as part of a plan to remake the county’s existing Green Energy Park.