News Sentinel: Forest life blossoms five years after devastating Smokies wildfires

Researchers are tallying recovering species and noting some surprises five years after deadly wildfires tore through Great Smoky Mountains National Park and adjacent communities, according to News Sentinel science writer Vincent Gabrielle.

Fire-dependent species such as the table mountain pine are seizing new land as a result of the wildfires, and some scientists have been surprised by the proliferation of chestnut saplings. Those saplings are the progeny of remaining chestnut root systems, though few if any survive to maturity. The chestnut was largely eliminated from the American landscape more than 100 years ago by a blight that eliminated one of the most productive mast species in the Southern Appalachians.

Scientists are also intrigued by the reappearance of certain fungi decimated by the 2016 fires, which originated near the Chimneys and ultimately spread up Bullhead and then down into Twin Creeks and the surrounding developed communities. Fifteen people were killed and thousands of structures destroyed.

A lot of Smokies habitat is fire dependent, but few wildfires have been allowed to burn in the backcountry over the history of the park. The fire and its aftermath provide researchers a unique opportunity to determine the effects the fire had on the natural landscape and accompanying plants, fungi, trees and animals.

UTK J-school students wax eloquent on the environmental issues that confront us every day

University of Tennessee journalism professor Mark Littmann asks students in his environmental writing class every semester to write short sketches about environmental issues they may witness during any given day. Such an assignment requires an almost poetical approach.

We published one such UTK environmental writing sketch last spring, the infamous story of the orphaned mayonnaise jar of Fort Sanders, and Hellbender Press decided to go with three this fall, because they are that good.

The disposable containers

It is Friday afternoon and the mother of three is at the grocery self-checkout buying her family’s food for the week. Her squeaky, gray shopping cart is domed with 12-packs of Coke, single-serve yogurt, single-packaged snacks, and the typical food staples that her children beg her for. She likes purchasing the individually packed snacks because they fit perfectly in the paper bag school lunches that she gives to her kids every day. That is the beauty of convenience.

Double bag the milk. The eggs and sliced bread get their own bag. Frozen foods are to be separated. She continues to place her cardboard-boxed foods in the plastic bags handily provided to her. The mother pays for her food and crumples her receipt.

When she gets home, she piles her grocery bags on her kitchen island. Carefully taking out each item she bought, she throws the plastic bags on the side counter out of her way. What is she supposed to do with these?

Her kids rush indoors as they get dropped off from school, ready for the weekend. They raid the fridge and each cracks open a chilled can of Coke. It is their favorite drink while they watch the afternoon cartoons. The half-empty cans sit on the coffee table for days before they are emptied.

The mother wonders why her trash bins fill up before the garbage men come each week. She thinks maybe she should start looking into buying Tupperware that will help with that, but washing dishes seems like such a hassle for a mother of three.

That is the beauty of convenience.

-Onate Cittlali

 Semi-conscious environmental awareness

The student jumps into the shower while brushing his teeth to conserve water. After completing his morning routine, the student drives 15 minutes downtown with a full tank of gas.

He parks his car in a designated spot. Before class, he makes a stop at a vending machine, grabbing his third soda for the week and swearing it’s his last one. He places the empty bottle into the recycling bin because that’s the right thing to do.

Upon completing his classes, the student rushes to his car. He drives a few minutes to the immediate city outskirts. He parks and enters a pizza kitchen to start his shift.

He dons his apron and sweats next to the constantly operating oven, which only turns off between the kitchen’s closing and opening. The student grabs one of the “92-percent biodegradable” Styrofoam cups to get more soda.

He goes through three cups, along with three pairs of latex-free gloves, during his shift.

As the pizza boxes pile up next to the dumpster, the student heads to his car after work. He drives 20 minutes back to his house, passing a stream of litter on the highway.  “At least I don’t do that,” the student thinks. The needle on the gas gauge begins to sway toward empty.

He gets home and jumps into the shower, brushing his teeth to conserve water.

-Keenan Thomas

 An urban habitat

The long yellow school bus screeches to a halt at the top of the little neighborhood street at exactly 6:40 a.m.; the brakes are sensitive to the nippy October morning air.  

Parents hug their little ones goodbye, wishing them a good day at school – and imploring them to eat the apple in their lunchboxes. The smiling driver closes the doors after the last anxious third-grader climbs the steep bus steps.

It’s a bumpy ride, but the warmth of the bus heaters is putting the boy in the seventh row back to sleep. The girl behind him though likes to paint pictures on the fogged window, with giggles spilling from her and her friend.  Several older kids are finishing homework from the night before. The bus is filled with a chorus of whispers and snores, harmonizing with the whirring of the bus engine as it bounces down the road.

There is only one little girl, at the very front of the bus, who does not join in on the muted chaos of the morning. Head propped up against the buzzing window, she stares absently out of it.  

Outside is a forest of fluorescent lamp posts under which a small herd of nursing home residents take shelter to smoke. Little sedans sleep in the dewy grass. An early morning runner bounds out from behind a bush.  

It seems the tallest trees are chimneys producing fluffy clouds in the cold. She turns away from the window, for there is nothing to see. No one has their nose pressed tightly against the damp window, crowding to get a peek at what roams just outside.

They missed the deer by 10 years.

-Ashlyn Smith

Conservation group weighs in on parkway proposals: NPCA urges full Environmental Impact Statement amid threat to Southern Appalachian habitats

 (An unedited version of this story was published in error. This is the final version.)

Proposed construction of an unfinished section of Foothills Parkway from Wears Valley to the Gatlinburg Spur would traverse 9.8 miles of natural beauty that is home to multiple protected species.

The project dates to 1944, when Congress mandated construction of a scenic 72-mile, slow-paced highway featuring panoramic views to run from Cocke County west to the Little Tennessee River. The parkway is complete from Tallassee, Tennessee to Wears Valley west of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Plans call for the Foothills Parkway to skirt the entire Tennessee side of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park from one end to the other, as previously reported by Hellbender Press.

The National Park Service (NPS) encourages public input and is reading comments received during a recent public comment period that ended Oct. 31. The park service will announce a new round of public comments  this spring after publishing an initial draft of the project’s scope.

The National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit supporter and monitor of national parks across the country, has already stated its concerns about the proposed highway, which park service officials acknowledge hasn't even been funded yet. Chief among its problems with the project is the lack of an Environmental Impact Statement.

"NPCA has been engaged on issues related to the Foothills Parkway since the 1990s. We are concerned that the National Park Service has not conducted a full Environmental Impact Study (EIS) for these proposed projects," NPCA Senior Program Manager Jeffrey Hunter said in comments collected earlier this year regarding the project.

"The significant impacts of some of the proposed alternatives in the planning document demand further study and analysis before proceeding. Such further study would be best accomplished by a full EIS. Furthermore, these projects should not be looked at together outside the context of a full EIS," Hunter wrote. The conservation organization also cited concerns about air and water quality, loss of mature forest and the diminishment of natural resources such as the Walker Sisters cabin near Metcalf Bottoms.

The project is a conceptualization from the early 1940s to relieve anticipated traffic on the Tennessee side of the park, which became an extended seven-decade affair. A short section of parkway between I-40 and Highway 321 near Cosby, at the eastern end, and a 33-mile stretch between Wears Valley and the Little Tennessee River at the western end, are finished.

Completion of 9.8-mile section 8D of the parkway would fill a major missing link to the only unfinished, congressionally mandated parkway left in the United States. The most likely route, depending on the outcome of environmental studies, will be to climb the north slope of Cove Mountain and then run along the long, narrow ridge of the mountain to Gatlinburg.

If approved, the challenge would be to construct the new section while limiting environmental damage associated with roads built through diverse natural habitats.

We are cutting through forests we need more than ever

This article was originally published in The Conversation. Jennifer Devine is an associate professor of Geography and Environmental Studies at Texas State University.

Every year the world loses an estimated 25 million acres (10 million hectares) of forest, an area larger than the state of Indiana.

Nearly all of it is in the tropics.

Tropical forests store enormous quantities of carbon and are home to at least two-thirds of the world’s living species, so deforestation has disastrous consequences for climate change and conservation. Trees absorb carbon dioxide as they grow, slowing its buildup in the atmosphere – but when they are burned or logged, they release their stored carbon, fueling further warming. Tropical forest loss generates nearly 50% more greenhouse gases than does the global transportation sector.

At the 2021 U.N. conference on climate change in Glasgow, more than 100 world leaders pledged on Nov. 1 to halt deforestation by 2030.

In the Declaration on Forests and Land Use, countries outlined their strategy, which focuses on supporting trade and development policies that promote sustainable production and consumption. Governments and private companies have pledged over $19.2 billion to support these efforts.

From my research on social and environmental issues in Latin America, I know that four consumer goods are responsible for the majority of global deforestation: beef, soy, palm oil, and wood pulp and paper products. Together these commodities are responsible for the loss of nearly 12 million acres (5 million hectares) annually. There’s also a fifth, less publicized key driver: organized crime, including illegal drug trafficking.