Finally, the news we’ve all been waiting for: the state of North Carolina has bought Chimney Rock. The 996-acre park cost us $24 million. This stunning property will forever be protected from development and will now become the centerpiece of a new 3,500-acre Hickory Nut Gorges State Park.
Read more in the Citizen-Times.
Join Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy (CMLC) and Friends of DuPont Forest (FODF) at 10 a.m. Saturday at DuPont State Forest, and help cleanup western North Carolina’s largest state forest. CMLC has been dedicated to helping preserve the integrity of the lands surrounding DuPont and added 118 acres last year to the northeastern section of DuPont. If you would like to join the efforts, please email them or call (828) 697-5777.
Maps will be provided to participants, so feel free to pack a lunch and hike afterwards. Friends of DuPont Forest is a volunteer service organization working to enhance the public use and enjoyment of the DuPont State Forest while protecting its natural resources. For more information about Friends of DuPont Forest, please call (828) 884-2006, or visit www.dupontforest.com.  Â
Last month, we were so busy with Christmas sales that we forgot to note two huge accomplishments in land preservation: Hump Mountain and Cane River. The Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy, which played a major role in both cases, sent us press releases about the areas.
RiverLink is forming a new Natural Resources Volunteer Advisory Committee, whose mission will be to expand on RiverLink’s efforts to revitalize the French Broad River and its tributaries as a place to work, live and play by providing expert advice on natural resources that are relevant to the French Broad watershed.Â
Van Burnette gets some footage from high atop a mountain. Photo by Peter White.
If you’ve been channel surfing and caught some footage of a beautiful waterfall or an epic vista that looks like it was filmed in Western North Carolina, you may have been watching Van Burnette’s television series, The Trail Explorer. The outdoors show appears at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday nights on URTV Channel 20. Van also writes articles for local newspapers such as the Black Mountain News and the Asheville Citizen-Times. We talked to him recently about being from WNC, being outdoors, and being on TV.
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