Living better together: New Balsam Mountain Trust director aims to make people and wildlife better neighbors

Located up a narrow mountain road in a building about the size of an average single-family house, the Balsam Mountain Trust Nature Center is tiny compared to Executive Director Michael Wall’s last professional home, the San Diego Natural History Museum in California. 

New book teaches kids how to be BearWise

As days lengthen and temperatures rise, black bears begin to move around in the woods searching for insects, nuts and berries. They also look for food in the gateway communities outside Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

House bill seeks $5 million for wildlife crossings

The N.C. House of Representatives has filed a budget bill that includes $5 million for infrastructure to reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions across the state, earning applause from the Safe Passage Fund Coalition.

Plans for safe passage: Research yields 
recommendations to stem wildlife deaths on I-40

After more than three years of research and analysis, a group focused on ending wildlife-vehicle collisions in the Pigeon River Gorge has released a report outlining its recommendations for keeping them safe from traffic.

‘Snuffed Out’: Unannounced dam release covers Oconaluftee in sediment

It was around 1 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 4, when Ken Brown’s phone started lighting up with photo texts depicting a massive sediment load dropping into the Oconaluftee River below Ela Dam, also known as the Bryson Hydroelectric Project. Within half an hour, he was standing on the riverbank. 

Harmon Den bridge will feature animal underpass

A bridge replacement project underway in the Pigeon River Gorge will temporarily close a section of Interstate 40, but once completed it will make the highway a safer thoroughfare not only for vehicles, but for wildlife as well. 

Bear attack injures two on the Blue Ridge Parkway

A black bear injured two people near the Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Asheville when it attacked on Wednesday, Sept. 29.

Below the waterline: Fred’s impact on aquatic life remains to be seen

Eric Romaniszyn had been Haywood Waterways Association’s project manager for less than six months when the legendary floods  of September 2004 tore through Clyde and Canton, challenging him to execute his new role addressing watershed health and education in the face of a once-in-a-lifetime weather event. 

Searching for safe passage: Group works for safer wildlife crossings on I-40

Growing up in eastern Kentucky, Frances Figart loved any chance to glimpse the diverse wildlife species roaming those Appalachian foothills — except when the sightings occurred after the creatures had become roadkill, something that occurred all too frequently. She felt their deaths keenly. 

Research indicates high levels of microplastics in WNC waters

Jason Love got interested in microplastics by way of mussels. 

A wildlife biologist by education and training, he’d long been interested in the reasons behind the decline of Southern Appalachian mussel species, and in particular that of the federally endangered Appalachian elktoe. He was interested while working in his previous position as site manager for Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory, and he’s interested now in his new position as associate director of the Highlands Biological Station.

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