You've found the place for folks who love Tennessee's public lands. We are a 501c3 nonprofit working to protect and preserve our best wild places. From the Land Between the Lakes to the Cherokee National Forest, Tennessee Heartwood advocates for the wild. Visit our site to learn more about what we do, from outdoors excursions to legal advocacy, we're always on the trail!
Two Spring Outings: Come Join Us!
outing 1 April 12-13: Land Between the Lakes Volunteer Naturalist Survey of the Core Areas
Calling all naturalists, amateurs and professionals! The Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area is home to thousands of acres of protected forest called the Core Areas. Originally designated under the World Biosphere Program decades ago, many of the original surveys and documents that made these areas worthy of distinction have been lost. While a few of these areas, like the Devil’s Backbone State Natural Area, are well known, there are many others -sometimes only a few acres in size- that have no survey records at all. On the weekend of April 12-13, our volunteers will explore a selection of the core areas to conduct informal surveys of their flora, fauna, and other characteristics. These habitats are diverse, ranging from wetlands and interior forest to small open lands. Our work will help the new management at the LBL in giving a face to these important but still little known places. This is a great opportunity to support one of the great public lands of our regions in a time of budget and staff cuts in our federal lands management agencies. (Click HERE to learn about the Core areas and their importance).
· We're going to meet at the Golden Pond Visitor Center 238 Visitor Center Dr, Golden Pond, KY 42211 at 8 Central for a briefing on each day. The goal is to be heading to our respective areas by 8:30.
Let us know that you will be attending in advance so we can discuss the best fit site for you based on location, habitat interest, level of access/remoteness, etc. We also want to make sure that you are able to upload the map of your location.
There will be a nurse on duty reachable by phone.
We'll be geotagging places and species of interest. This is to help the staff at the LBL with inventorying these special places. We request that these do NOT get shared publicly at this time, especially if it might involve sensitive species or habitats. We will be pooling our findings into a common app. Let us know if you need assistance in geotagging and uploading.The Land Between the Lakes NRA is grateful for our support. Let's do the best we can, especially in this time of the Forest Service facing budget cuts and losing staff. We will have a debriefing at 4:00 at the Golden Pond Visitor Center. It is encouraged, but not mandatory, especially if you are still out in the field finding cool stuff!
Contact: wdmounger@yahoo.com 423.877.4616
DNickell57@gmail.com 270.816.0837
outing 2 April 19: Savage Gulf Naturalist Hike with John Johnson
Get ready to see the west side of Savage Gulf State Park. Intrepid naturalist John Johnson led an awesome day last April of Savage Gulf's east side, returning this year to lead a look of the Gulf's other end. John will not only identify the spring flora and fauna (including those legendary spring ephemerals that might still be in flower), but also discuss the ecology of the Cumberland Plateau and its diversity of forest and riparian communities
As last year, we're looking to see a variety of habitats. We'll meet at the Stone Door trailhead, doing a small 0.4 mile loop to see Laurel Falls, after which we will continue along the rim of the gulf for 0.8 miles, before descending 0.8 miles down to the gulf itself. We will break and eplore some of the bottomlands along Big Creek before returning back to the Stone Door Trailhead to wrap up around 3:30-4:00. Good footwear is essential, and bringing water and snack/lunch highly recommmended. As we will be going into the gulf and back, this would be considered a fairly strenuous hike. If you plan to attend, please let us know and register. Attendence is set to a limit of 20. Come join us!
Reminder that the hike starts at 9:00 CST/10:00 EST. Savage Gulf is in CST.
For registration and more information, contact us: wdmounger@yahoo.com 423.877.4616