Tag: Southern Appalachian Creature Feature
The content below has been tagged with the term “Southern Appalachian Creature Feature.”
Podcasts
-
The passenger pigeon went extinct in the early 20th century. Photo by Tim Lenz, CC BY 2.0.The passenger pigeon and unforeseen consequences
September 4, 2009 | 2 minute read
Transcript Greetings and welcome to the Southern Appalachian Creature Feature. I’ve often spoken of white nose syndrome, the mysterious ailment killing thousands of bats in the northeast which is working its way southward. One of the myriad questions surrounding this affliction is what the death of thousands of bats means for the greater natural community, including human health, considering the volume of insects bats consume and that an impact on one part of a community can reverberate throughout, possibly with serious unforeseen consequences. Learn more...
-
Flowering American chestnut. Photo by Bob McInnes, CC BY 2.0.
Return of the chestnut
August 28, 2009 | 2 minute read
Transcript Greetings and welcome to the Southern Appalachian Creature Feature. The Cradle of Forestry in America, in North Carolina’s Transylvania County, was the site of the nation’s first forestry school and you can still visit the one-room school house the students used. It’s appropriate then, that beside this schoolhouse is planted a young chestnut tree. The American chestnut was once the most abundant tree in Eastern hardwood forests, and was functionally eliminated by an Asian fungus, the chestnut blight. Learn more...
-
Help create a photomosaic
August 21, 2009 | 2 minute read
Transcript Greetings and welcome to the Southern Appalachian Creature Feature. Summertime is upon us. Grab the sunscreen, grab the fishing pole, grab the digital camera. As part of an ongoing and widespread effort to encourage people to spend more time outside, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service invites you to submit your summer photos of friends and family enjoying the outdoors to become part of a photomosaic of nearly 10,000 images. Learn more...
-
Train wreck on the North Toe River
August 14, 2009 | 2 minute read
Transcript Greetings and welcome to the Southern Appalachian Creature Feature. It’s the telephone call a biologist never wants to get – the chemical spill, the fish kill, the accident that makes you stop everything else. The most recent was a train wreck along the North Toe River in Mitchell County. Fortunately no one was hurt. The train, carrying ethanol and propane among other things, derailed on the banks of the North Toe River, home to the endangered Appalachian elktoe mussel. Learn more...
-
Chucky madtom. Photo by J.R. Shute, Conservation Fisheries, Inc.
Efforts to help the chucky madtom fish
August 7, 2009 | 2 minute read
Transcript Greetings and welcome to the Southern Appalachian Creature Feature. The chucky madtom is one of Southern Appalachia’s rarest fish, found only from a single stream in a single county in Eastern Tennessee. Only 14 specimens of the fish have ever been documented, the last sighting in 2004. This comes despite regular, and sometimes exhaustive, searches by biologists. Madtoms are small catfish, and the chucky madtom, like all madtoms, lives on the stream bottom, finding shelter beneath the rocks, logs, and other debris. Learn more...
-
Box turtle peering through reed canary grass. Photo by Gary Peeples, USFWS.
Box turtles
July 31, 2009 | 2 minute read
Transcript Greetings and welcome to the Southern Appalachian Creature Feature. If anyone has first hand experience with a reptile, it’s probably a box turtle, the state reptile of North Carolina. While box turtles may grace numerous classrooms or home terrariums, the truth is scientists don’t know a lot about the status of box turtle populations and fear they may be declining. In order to get a clearer picture of the state of box turtles, the Box Turtle Collaborative was recently formed by UNC-Greesnboro, Davidson College, and a handful of state agencies including the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. Learn more...
-
Hemlock woolly adelgid, an exotic insect pest. Photo by Nicholas A. Tonelli, CC BY 2.0.
Recent research into hemlock mortality
July 24, 2009 | 2 minute read
Transcript Greetings and welcome to the Southern Appalachian Creature Feature. The death of hemlock trees from the hemlock woolly adelgid is an increasingly widespread and well-known phenomena, but what remains a mystery is exactly how this will impact the future of Southern Appalachian forests. The movement of carbon through a natural community can have a profound affect on the type of plant community at a site. A team of researchers working at the Coweeta Hydrological Laboratory in Macon County, North Carolina looked at how carbon cycling is impacted by hemlock woolly adelgid infestations, comparing the decline of infested trees to girdled trees, or trees whose flow of nutrients and water had been cut off. Learn more...
-
Chickadee. Photo by Tim Lenz, CC BY 2.0.
State of the birds
July 17, 2009 | 2 minute read
Transcript Greetings and welcome to the Southern Appalachian Creature Feature. The children on our street often congregate in the yard with the best play set, but recently the bright yellow slide in the yard was ruled off limits. Not because it isn’t safe, rather a chickadee made a nest in a birch stump next to the base of the slide. Chickadees are one of a handful of Eastern forest birds that successfully adapt to urban and suburban areas, however the situation has not been as good for many birds over the past forty years. Learn more...
-
Little brown bat from Avery County with White Nose Syndrome. Photo by Gabrielle Graeter, NCWRC.
Southern Appalachians face white nose syndrome
July 10, 2009 | 2 minute read
Transcript Greetings and welcome to the Southern Appalachian Creature Feature. White nose syndrome, an affliction of unknown origin that is fatal to bats, has been confirmed in two Virginia counties, the first cases in the Southern Appalachians. First documented in New York in 2006, WNS has killed tens of thousands of bats as it spread north and south. The affliction takes its name from the white-tufts of fungus that often grow on the muzzles of infected bats, however, it’s unknown if this fungus is the cause of the problem or merely taking advantage of a diseased and weakened bat. Learn more...
-
Adult Rafinesques big-eared bat soars through the night. USDA photo by the Forest Service.
Trying out artificial bat roosts
July 3, 2009 | 2 minute read
Transcript Greetings and welcome to the Southern Appalachian Creature Feature. Biologists are concerned about Rafinesque’s big-eared bats because of declining populations. They tend to forsake the caves and mines we often think of as bat roosts, preferring instead abandoned buildings and tree cavities, especially across the southern portion of their range, which covers the Southeastern United States. One of the issues thought to be contributing to the decline is the loss of abandoned buildings and tree cavities. Learn more...
