ENVIRONMENT

A band of light rain passed through the Uwharries on a recent Saturday evening. By Sunday morning, the sky was crystalline blue. Despite a lively northwest breeze, the temperature was unseasonably mild. I was out with the dogs, admiring the tawny field of native grass backlit by the unadulterated sun. Suddenly, a line of smoke […]

A team of fourth- and fifth-grade students from Steele Creek Elementary School in Charlotte won first place Saturday, March 4, in the second Autobell Car Wash Creek Challenge at UNC Charlotte. The morning contest capped weeks of study and activities focusing on science and water quality topics as well as local history and geography. Eight […]

If you’re like most people in the Charlotte area you drive a lot, and most of that is alone. Now a new initiative is encouraging people to try to limit those single-person trips by car. Sustain Charlotte, a local nonprofit that focuses on solving the city’s sustainability challenges, has launched an effort until Oct. 31 […]

Mecklenburg County’s population of white-tailed deer has ballooned in recent years, as residents of Charlotte and other towns can verify with frequent sightings of deer gamboling and grazing in backyards, gardens, parks and greenways. At the same time, deer hunting in North Carolina’s most urbanized county has also expanded, in part through specialized hunts. The […]

[highlightrule] Learn more about KEEPING WATCH on HABITAT for 2017[/highlightrule] Walk into Ernie McLaney’s backyard in southeast Charlotte and for a moment, you may forget you are in a neighborhood of more than 6,000 residents. It’s a serene and private place, enclosed by trees, shrubs and a fence and lined with a curlicue paver path. […]

My husband’s cousin lives on a farm abutting Dartmoor National Park in Devon, England. (As my friend Sam says, everyone should have family so well placed.) Like the Uwharries, it’s a landscape of rolling topography punctuated with rocky outcrops, and the park is fragmented by villages and farms. Trails traverse a patchwork of public and […]

Imagine: Charlotte neighborhoods with their own master plans to care for their trees. A citywide initiative to pinpoint neighborhoods with few trees and then help get trees planted there. A dependable, dedicated source of public money to care for Charlotte’s street trees. Assistance for low-income homeowners who can’t afford to give proper care to large […]

One interesting and beautiful plant you may have seen along a river or creek, sometimes in great number, is spotted jewelweed (Impatiens capensis). You may be more familiar with another of its names – touch-me-not. It is also called common jewelweed, orange jewelweed or orange balsam. Spotted jewelweed grows predominantly in wetlands and can grow […]

I wanted to know more about the rarest butterfly in North Carolina, so I caught up recently with Nick Haddad, the William Neal Reynolds Professor of Applied Ecology at N.C. State University to ask about the St. Francis’ satyr and its conservation status. First, I wanted to know, what exactly is the St. Francis’ satyr, […]

Myth and legend surround willow trees, as well as facts. The graceful weeping willows have long narrow leaves and limbs drooping from the tree trunk, an appearance sometimes associated with death and dying. Shakespeare uses willow trees in several of his plays, including the “Willow Song” in Othello, and in Hamlet Ophelia breaks willow branches […]