General News

It’s been said that good fences make good neighbors, but a dense, evergreen hedge can keep the peace and provide attractive wildlife habitat as well. Whether you live on a tenth of an acre in town or a hundred acres in the country, you always abut a property you cannot control, and sometimes a fence […]

I was fortunate to have a completely new and exciting hunting experience recently, going grouse hunting in West Virginia. I’ve not done much upland bird hunting, so it was different from most of my hunting experiences. It was both challenging and exhilarating, and I can’t wait to go again. Grouse live mostly in wooded areas, […]

The following is excerpted, with permission, from The Margins of a Greater Wildness: Nature Essays on Stanley Creek and Beyond, a collection of essays on local topics from the Stanley Creek community in eastern Gaston County, where the Rankin family has lived for many generations. Most people around the Gaston County town of Stanley today […]

I have a notepad on my kitchen counter for a running grocery list, and there’s one on my desk devoted to errands and chores. I’ve kept a digital file of all the books I’ve read for more than 20 years. My nature observations are recorded in a hefty, leather-bound journal. Despite an obvious affinity for […]

In the heart of the Piedmont, there’s a place apart – a far cry from the skyscrapers, highways, shopping centers and subdivisions of our urban areas. The 5,160-acre Birkhead Wilderness Area, at the northern tip of the Uwharrie National Forest, is designated as a place “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled […]

Since the first U.S. zoning laws in the early 20th century, one of their essential principles has been separating uses. Houses, stores, apartments and offices were kept apart from each other. One unintended consequence was more traffic, as people needed to drive from place to place. Another was that, as jobs and work changed, zoning […]

The first recipient of a faculty research grant from the Institute for Social Capital, Inc. (ISC) will be Dr. Mason Haber, assistant professor in the UNC Charlotte Department of Psychology. The ISC this fall announced the creation of its first ISC Faculty Research Grant. The purpose of the grant is to provide funding to UNC […]

Weaving baskets from natural materials. Gathering wild forest plants to create remedies. Whispering an incantation over a skin burn to take away the pain. Those all might sound like traditions from a forgotten age, but they’re activities that are still alive or were recently practiced in North Carolina’s Uwharrie Mountain region, a recent report says. […]

The past year has been a tough one for Charlotteans. We witnessed the public firing of our county manager, the incarceration of our mayor, and the forced resignation of our public school superintendent. We’ve experienced leadership transitions at every level of government and in many of the nonprofits that serve the most vulnerable residents of […]

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to spend a day in the field with two luminaries from the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences. Ornithologist John Gerwin has studied the special population of black-throated green warblers that breeds on forested peaks in the Uwharries, and he was eager to spend some time in our grasslands. […]