Homeward bound
After Jersey and the Big Apple (see last week’s Naturalist’s Corner - http://www.smokymountainnews.com/outdoors/item/7554-famous-nyc-offspring,) it was time for a leisurely trip home. We headed south to Cape May and took the Cape May - Lewes Ferry across the Delaware...
Famous NYC offspring
New York City is big, bustling and in July – hot, but there are always entertaining and even educational ways to escape the heat. The planets aligned just right giving both Denise and me the entire July Fourth week off. We donned our tourist attitudes and headed north...
Kudos Governor Perdue
News outlets began reporting Sunday night (July 1) that North Carolina governor Bev Perdue vetoed Senate Bill 820, which would have allowed energy companies to use a process known as hydraulic fracturing, a.k.a. fracking, to drill for natural gas in the state....
What the frack?
Governor Perdue has to be weary. This weariness was apparent months ago when she declared she would not seek re-election. Her vetoes are little more than symbolic with the current make up of the General Assembly and here she is with another bombshell on her desk –...
Check your vital signs
The Mountain Resources Commission along with the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area, the USDA Forest Service and the National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center at the University of North Carolina at Asheville have created a Western North Carolina Vitality...
Bog is good
Mountain bogs are some of the rarest and most imperiled natural habitat in the country. They are generally small and scattered across the landscape often isolated from other wetlands. This isolation can create unique habitats, which in turn create unique flora and...