The Southern Highland Reader

MURPHY–Dwight Otwell, staff writer for the Cherokee Scout in Murphy, reported recently about efforts made by mountain farmers to diversify and to profit from niche crops.

Agriculture has dwindled rapidly in the mountains, where farmers face not only the standard competition from industrial farming, but the added challenge of a lack of flat land.

Otwell’s lead:

Farmers who make their entire livelihood from working the land are almost a relic from the past in Cherokee County.

As the number of large farms has steadily dwindled, a new type of farmer has emerged, one who can forge a living from an acre or two growing for a specialty market.

He goes on to interview a vintner, a dairy farmer and vegetable farmers, all of whom are using innovative methods to make their famrs work.

Another excerpt:

A new type of market is using the Internet to sell products to high-end restaurants or consumers. The main market for this area is Atlanta.

The idea is that a chef gets the fresh produce he wants the next day, Wood said. The chef knows the farm the produce comes from and he trusts it. A person with as little as a half acre of land willing to grow specialty crops can make $20,000 to $30,000 an acre.

Read Otwell’s story in the Scout here.

STATEWIDE–The Charlotte Observer reports that state health officials now say Lyme Disease can be contracted in North Carolina. For years, officials thought the tick-borne ilness was unlikely to be contracted here.

An excerpt:

Based on the new evidence, Dr. Megan Davies, state epidemiologist, said the state is now working to get the word to doctors, who for years were reluctant to even test patients for Lyme because it wasn’t considered much of a possibility.

“What we’re trying to communicate to physicians is that it’s possible to acquire Lyme in North Carolina, so don’t hold to an old belief,” Davies said, noting that she and others are meeting with infectious disease doctors at the state’s medical schools to get the word out.

Read the story here from the Observer.

REGIONAL–With a steady resurgence of the mountain black bear population in progress (and there was never any great shortage), its no surprise that they’re in the news so often these days. But even so, this week was a humdinger.

Bryson City is used to bears, given its proximity to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and lots of National Forest. Still, when a female and her cub came to town, found a tree they liked, and camped out, it caused a stir.

Clay Wilson at the Smoky Mountain Times got some mileage out of the story. Here’s an excerpt:

“I’ve never seen so many people,” said retired Swain County Schools teacher Shirley Sutton, who with her husband Eugene owns the property where the tree is.

Sutton had spotted the bears early Monday morning. She called the police to report the situation.

“They said just leave (them) alone, and they would come down,” Sutton said just before noon on Tuesday, with the bears still visible out her living room window. “But they haven’t come down.”

Also this week a Cherokee man was brought up on federal charges of dealing in poached bear parts, some of which are used in homeopathic treatments in Asia and elsewhere. Jon Ostendorff at the Asheville Citizen-Times wrote it up. His lead:

A Cherokee man must make a public apology for illegally selling 51 bear gall bladders, the U.S. Department of Justice ruled.

Last but by no means least was the misadventure in Cherokee, where a handler at one of the tourist attraction “bear parks” made famous recently by game show host Bob Barker was bitten by one of her charges. The feds are looking in to this incident.

Again, on the bear beat, Ostendorff:

Mary Clapsaddle, 75, who has been managing the park for about 20 years, was recovering at Mission Hospital from injuries to her hand and arm, said her son, Kole Clapsaddle. He owns the business.

She was airlifted to the hospital after the attack on Monday. A bear bit her while she was giving water to the animal about 12:45 p.m.

Clapsaddle said his mother broke safety rules when she stepped into a pen with a bear. He said handlers are supposed to place food and water in one part of the pen while the bear is secured in another part.

“She didn’t follow the rules,” he said. “If you follow the rules, you don’t get hurt.”

Here’s the rest of Ostendorff’s story.

BRYSON CITY–The Smoky Mountain Times’s Jim Casada takes a break from recent reviews of outdoor literature to share some Thanksgiving memories of eating and hunting in the Smokies.

An excerpt:

From that point on throughout my boyhood and beyond, rabbit hunting loomed large in Thanksgiving weekends. Hunts on Thanksgiving Day were normally abbreviated, because we had a grand feast and family gathering commencing sometime in early afternoon and culminating with a feast featuring fare like Grandma’s cathead biscuits and gravy, Aunt Emma’s ambrosia, Mom’s applesauce cake, and of course, turkey.

The trimmings included things which aren’t standard everywhere, as Grandma Minnie provided delicacies such as watermelon and peach pickles, leather britches beans, and a brown-sugar topped casserole using cushaws – an old-time winter squash.

Read Casada’s piece here.

The New York Times’ Alex Williams wrote recently that some parents are applying the advice of television dog trainer Cesar Millan (aka the “Dog Whisperer”) to their child-rearing philosophies.

An excerpt from the story:

Indeed, Mr. Millan’s advice has replaced a shelf full of books on how to tame an unruly child. “It’s all the same simple concept: how to be the pack leader in your own house,” [said Amy Twomey, a blogger on parenthood for The Dallas Morning News.]

Certainly, an army, or at least a few divisions, of credentialed experts on human parenthood long ago stumbled on Mr. Millan’s philosophical holy trinity — exercise, discipline and affection equals happiness. And Mr. Millan does not hold himself up as a new Dr. Spock; he has never opined on how one should raise a creature with two legs in his show on the National Geographic Channel, or in his four books.

But some parents — particularly those weary of never-say-no techniques and child-rearing books suggesting that children should call the shots — say they find inspiration, and even practical advice, in Mr. Millan’s approach, which teaches pet owners how to become the alpha dogs by projecting his trademark “calm-assertive energy.”

Where does Millan stand on the idea? Writes Williams:

As a native of Mexico, he said, he adheres to a more traditional, hierarchical child-rearing philosophy, which he considers effective in both the pack and the family. There, “for thousands of years, the elder has always been the pack leader, it’s never the child,” Mr. Millan said. “In America, kids have too many options when they only need one: ‘Just do it, because.’ ”

Read the Times piece here.

ROBBINSVILLE-Zelerie Rose at the Graham Star writes that $120,000 of funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act supports a program to control invasive plant species and support habitat of two federally-listed endangered species along the Cheoah River.

Here’s a clip from Rose’s story:

The three-year project started this fall, involves nine miles of river and will protect the Virginia Spiraea, a federally-threatened shrub, and the Appalachian Elktoe, a federally-endangered mussel.

The treatment of the non-native species such as mimosa, Oriental bittersweet, yam, privet, Japanese honeysuckle, princess tree, kudzu, and multiflora rose, is the collaborative effort of Western North Carolina Alliance, the Cherokee Environmental Natural Resource Office, and North Carolina National Forests.

“Our job is to work with the various organizations involved in the project and educate them about non-native invasive plants,” said Bob Gale, ecologist for WNC Alliance. “These plants were introduced both intentionally and accidentally and have no natural controls limiting their spread. Left untreated they can threaten or endanger native habitats and native wildlife species.”

Read the story from the Graham Star here.

REGIONAL–David Tell at the Macon County News reports on the opening of deer season this Monday.

The season, which is expected to be an active one, runs until December 12.

Tell’s lead:

Deer hunting season opens Monday, and it’s expected to be a good one.

Whitetails are numerous, active, mobile — and hungry, according to wildlife officials, and hunter interest and presence are seen as strong.

Read the whole piece here.

REGIONAL–Dave Tabler’s Appalachian History blog touches on an interview with herbalist Tommie Bass (1908-1996), and Bass’s take on giving money to politicians. Here’s Bass:

I figured . . . the fact of the business is a fellow running for office, a man or a woman, I’m like the little boy was about the peckerwood.

Peckerwood pecked a hole in a hollow tree and he went in there, and the little boy he drove a peg in behind it. Somebody said to him, “Son,” said, “you shouldn’t of done the little bird that way.” [And the boy said], “Well the son-of-a-gun pecked in, now let him peck out”.

And so I’m that way about a politician. If he wants to get into office, let him get in there (chuckles), but I ain’t gonna try to help him. Course, if he’s a good guy, I’d talk for him, but as far as paying him in there, I don’t go along with that.

Read the post here.

Tommis Bass. Photo by Tom Rankin, 1983

BALSAM–Hiking in the leaf-strewn woods feels colorful and messy, like a kid’s taped-together scrapbook. I am inspired to play the I Spy game. Spying the work of an industrious sapsucker drilled neatly into the bark of a tall tulip tree, I ask Sam (my six year old son) what made the neat line of bark holes.

Contributor Blair Ogburn is Senior Naturalist at Balsam Mountain Preserve. She, her husband Jon and son Sam live in Addie Community

“Woodpeckers” he says and I explain that a woodpecker did indeed tap out these little caverns. From the holes, tree sap will flow and provide nourishment to animals via sticky goo. Sapsuckers, other birds, and insects will come to the tree café and enjoy lapping some sap.

Sam takes a turn at I Spy and delights me with “I spy a tree’s nose”. I look around for a nose, perhaps nostril holes or a slimy fungus, but my eyes find only twigs and vines. Then I notice a wooden wedge pushed forth from furrowed bark of a dead standing tree (or snag). The growth Sam spied is actually a fungal shelf, appearing like a big black nose on the face of a dying tree. We take a closer look and find a pulsing web of life on the mossy shelf nose. There are beetles, scarlet colored mites, and dark spiders in webs from underneath.

Shelf fungi

Shelf fungi form dense anchors and send fungal fingers through snags and logs to weaken them. The wood then begins to rot and decompose. Wood munching insects and other recyclers move into softened wood to take advantage of a food source. Mother nature is on the job to create ‘new’ soil from old wood.

Peeking from a little nature nook in the snag, Sam and I find a golden mouse, our last discovery in today’s game of I Spy. The mouse’s fluffy fibrous nest is tucked inside the safe haven of the rotting tree. Thanks to decomposers like the shelf fungi, a mouse can find warmth and shelter from cold, wind and rain. As Sam and I are done spying on nature for the day, we turn back home to seek shelter of our own.

REGIONAL–The Southern Appalachian Bear Study Group, a group of biologists from Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia who study black bear populations, think that the current population of bears across the Southern Appalachians is the highest on record.

An excerpt from Morgan Simmons’ story in the Knoxville News Sentinel:

The latest UT studies put the black bear population in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park at around 1,500, or about two bears for every square mile of the park.

The number of bears taken by legal hunting in Tennessee has increased dramatically since 1982, when the harvest was only 21 bears. In 1997, hunters harvested a record 370 bears. Many biologists thought the population had peaked that year, but then came the 2008-09 hunting season, when Tennessee hunters harvested 446 black bears for yet another record.

[Research ecologist] Frank Van Manen said that while the region may be biologically capable of supporting even more bears, it’s clear that in some areas, the population has reached its cultural capacity as determined by people’s willingness to tolerate bears visiting their bird feeders or breaking into their homes.

Read the story here.

CULLOWHEE – A new exhibit focusing on the legendary Plott hound hunting dogs of Haywood County will open Friday, Oct. 9, at Western Carolina University’s Mountain Heritage Center.

“Our State Dog: North Carolina’s Plott Hound” explains the history and origins of the dog breed with a combination of artifacts and photographs. The exhibit covers breed characteristics and describes how Plotts are used to hunt bears, boars and raccoons. Museum visitors also will have an opportunity to view bear and boar skins, rare hunting weapons and other artifacts.

The original breeding stock of hunting dogs was imported to America by Johannes Plott around 1750, said Mountain Heritage Center Curator Trevor Jones. The Plott family and their dogs settled in Haywood County around 1800, and both the family and the dogs prospered in the New World, Jones said.

As time passed, the Plott hound’s legendary ability to chase bears and boars grew, and Plotts are now raised across the country and around the world.

The Mountain Heritage Center staff worked with the National Plott Hound Association, the Jackson County Coon Hunter’s Club, members of the Plott family, and local bear and boar hunters in developing the exhibit, Jones said.

Many aspects of the exhibit are based on the research of Plott hound experts Bob Plott and John Jackson. Bob Plott is a descendant of Johannes Plott. Many artifacts were supplied by local hunters.

The exhibit will be on display through April 8 of next year.

The Mountain Heritage Center is located on the ground floor of WCU’s H.F. Robinson Administration Building. The museum is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, and from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursday. The center also is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, June through October.

REGIONAL–On Sunday, the Charlotte Observer’s Bruce Henderson outlined the challenges faced by the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

His lead:

Having just celebrated its 75th birthday, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park finds its future threatened by wavering public support for America’s green places.

The problem passes from one generation to the next: a chronic lack of financial support in the past, declining visits now and a future shaped by today’s children who are spending far less time in the outdoors.

Another excerpt:

Kids don’t play outdoors – splashing in creeks and chasing fireflies – as they once did, numerous studies and most parents will attest. Increasingly sedentary and overweight, they’re more likely to be mesmerized by a Wii than a salamander.

“Nature-deficit disorder,” author Richard Louv called it in an influential 2005 book. Research has linked lack of unstructured time outdoors to childhood depression, anxiety and behavioral problems.

“If they don’t have those experiences, then we’re worried that it won’t be a priority for future generations to keep natural areas and a clean, healthy environment,” said Lisa Tolley, who heads the N.C. Office of Environmental Education.

The whole story here.

GSMNP–A Tennessee man has a date with a magistrate after his pit bull severely injured a deer near Elkmont last week.

The unleashed 100 lb. dog attacked a mature 130 lb. buck, and the deer was so badly wounded that it had to be euthanized.

A news report is here, but the online National Parks Traveler goes into more depth, discussing past incidents:

An excerpt:

A … spokesman at the park said such incidents are fairly rare in the Smokies, and described another situation several years ago that illustrates the value in the “leash law” for protecting pets as well as wildlife. In that case the dog was riding in the bed of a pickup truck which was being driven through the Cades Cove area.

The dog spotted a black bear, jumped out of the truck, and headed for the bear, which was large enough that it wasn’t intimidated by the dog. A chase ensured, and the dog became the prey, running back toward the owner, who had stopped his truck alongside the road. In this case, the pursuing bear reportedly broke off the chase when the dog ran into a group of people who had gathered to watch the action. That case fortunately ended without further incident for both the dog and the bear, but this one could have taken a nasty turn.

Read the post here.

ROBBINSVILLE–Former Madison County state legislator Herbert Hyde once said he got into politics for the same reason he mows his grass: to protect children from snakes.

Well, sadly, times are a’changin’ — at least according to some Robbinsvillians, who say the government is to blame for this year’s upward trend in timber rattler sightings and bites. The feds, they say (President Obama himself, no doubt), have been releasing extra snakes into the woods to protect them from extinction.

Snake (l), Feds.

Graham Star editor James Budd wrote about it last month. Here’s an excerpt:

“It’s a lie,” [State biologist Mike] Carraway said. “It’s an absolute lie.”

Carraway used to be stationed in Andrews and served Graham County in the early ‘80s.

He heard the same rumors back then.

“Some people even say we used a helicopter to drop them,” Carraway said.

Shot down by the wildlife folks, I then focused on the U.S. Forest Service …

Read Budd’s piece here, which he wraps up by noting that rattlesnakes are nowhere near endangered.

NATIONAL-The story of pro football star Michael Vick’s incarceration for his involvement in organized dog fighting — and his eventual release and return to the NFL — has excited plenty of comment.

Michael Vick

Some considered it odd that pro ballplayers who have killed others when driving drunk did far less time than Vick.

In today’s Knoxville News Sentinel, though, columnist Ina Hughs takes a look at Vick from a couple of angles, and her main thrust is summed up in this excerpt:

“The second issue this debate raises is a more controversial question: What makes Vick so morally reprehensible?

As Shayne Lee puts it in an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer: It’s true that Americans are fond of dogs, but dogs are animals, and exploiting and killing animals is “as American as Apple iPods.”

In the name of science research, we expose and inject rats and chimps to all sorts of dread illnesses and lethal drugs. We dab mysterious chemicals in their eyes to test our cosmetics, with no clue as to its effect. We make sandwiches out of pigs and slaughter baby cows for scaloppini. We shoot deer for fun and mantel decor.

Fine restaurants drop live lobsters into boiling water.”

Hughs’ point is valid. Sure, dog fighting is ugly. So are a lot of things we take for granted.

This sort of contradiction, or selective outrage, or whatever, is part of what made the recent tempest over Cherokee’s tourist bear pens an eye-roller. Are the bear attractions lowbrow? Sure. Is it a particularly pleasant existence for the bears? No. But if Florida tourists think Cherokee’s pens are the worst thing that happens to black bears in this neck of the woods, they should come back later in the fall.

And if they then argue that the bear shouldn’t be hunted, they should see what’s left of a bear that wanders in front of an 18-wheeler. Bear populations are growing, and they need elbow room.

Read the whole News-Sentinel piece here.

REGIONAL–Almost every morning in summer, songbirds delight us with a sunrise chorus.

On this day, as I walk in a Great Smoky Mountains spruce-fir forest with Cherokee Middle School science-campers, the avian concert includes the bouncy tunes of a winter wren and endless trills from a slate-colored junco, strangely resembling a cell phone jingle.

Up at around 6,000 feet in elevation, birds that live in an Appalachian high mountain fir forest find food in pines and berry bushes, grab insects on the wing (of which there are plenty here now), and search the leaf litter for moist and meaty invertebrates such as snails.

Contributor Blair Ogburn is Senior Naturalist at Balsam Mountain Preserve. She, her husband Jon and son Sam live in Addie Community

Ground snails feed on leafy vegetation and microscopic soil particles. Amazingly, they are able to gather and store calcium from the soil and soft rock. In spruce-fir habitat, snails make up an important part of a bird’s diet.

Thrushes, from the bird family Turdidae, which includes robins and bluebirds, eat lots of snails while on their nesting grounds. The feeding cycle from soil to snail allows for the production of strong shells (through the collection of calcium carbonate). Birds eat the snails and ingest calcium they can use for their own egg production.

Environmental changes, like an increase in pollution, may potentially alter the makeup of minerals in soil and/or air chemistry. In the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, acid deposition is a form of pollution (and a by-product of the coal-fired power plants in NC and TN) that affects high elevation forests and has been shown to alter soil, air, and water chemistry which might affect the food chain.

What if land snail populations were to decline because of acid deposition? This could happen if calcium became unavailable or scarce in the soil. Could thrushes (at the top of the soil/snail/bird food chain) be negatively affected since they gather calcium from eating snails?

These are the kinds of questions being asked by scientists in the Smoky Mountains and around the globe in an effort to monitor and manage natural areas, based on biological data and changing interrelationships.

Today at Clingman’s Dome, just below 6,000 feet in elevation on the North Carolina side of the park, the science campers and I join park rangers to collect data from the spruce-fir habitat. Our goal is to capture snails and birds that live up here, so that they can be identified to species, then recorded and released. Sleepy students come alive as they leave for their “snail shell scavenger hunt”.

Our work will help biologists catalog which snails live here, and which, if any, are being affected by pollution and monitored soil chemistry. Perhaps the process will help to answer important biological questions.

National Public Radio interviewed a couple of crow scholars recently, one each from Cornell and the University of Washington, who assured us all that crows, amazingly, can tell human beings apart, and are adept at holding grudges against people they don’t like.

An excerpt:

(Interviewer) KRULWICH: And here’s the fascinating part: Once a crow sees another crow squawking at a person, yes, they join in automatically, but somehow they will also remember that person that they’re squawking at. So, should they see you again, they’re going to squawk at you again, which will warn a whole new set of crows in that next place you’re a bad guy. So now you’ve got a whole new set of crows that have learned to hate you.

And so Professor Marzluff says that after he banded some baby crows near the University of Washington, everywhere he went across the campus, whether he went to an automatic teller at the local bank…

Prof. MARZLUFF: And if I go and play tennis in the neighborhood court, if I walked around the block, if I walk over to my neighbors, there are several individuals that will scold me, regardless of what I’m doing.

KRULWICH: And Professor McGowan says after he banded some crows near Ithaca, New York, he could be downtown, very far from any crow nest…

Prof. MCGOWAN: And a crow looks down and he sees me and starts yelling. And, I mean, I’m walking on the sidewalk.

KRULWICH: Or he could be in a public park. He could be mingling with other people, and then a bunch of crows would suddenly appear…

Prof. MCGOWAN: They would come out of the woods and circle overhead, yelling at me.

Read the whole cacophony here.

REGIONAL-This well-written eastern Kentucky blog offers plenty of thoughts about off-the-grid Appalachian living and parenting.

And in the case of one of her most recent posts, a time-honored point of caution.

An excerpt:

I have been taught since childhood about the importance of watching out for snakes.  I learned how to identify the different species and the ones that were the most dangerous.  I was told what to do if I saw a snake, or if I was bit by one.  It comes with the territory being a child of Appalachia.  One of the things that I have always remembered is – where there are blackberries, there are snakes.

I don’t know if it is the brambles that attracts them, or the plethora of little critters coming to eat berries.  If I were a snake, I’d say it is a little of both.

Here’s the whole post.

Copperhead

Jonathan Hearne

LEICESTER-Once, in a field near Franklin, Jonathan Hearne was hit by lightning. Or rather, lightning struck the tool he was using to shear wool off a sheep. The bolt then jumped from the shears to his knees, and with a burst of flame “blew the bottoms off his feet” and killed the sheep.

Jonathan Hearne is a sheep-shearer. His days aren’t this hard as a rule, but it’s pretty tough work, and it doesn’t pay too well unless you work fast.

He owns property between Newfound and Leicester – at the eastern end of Haywood County – that his parents bought in 1966, and he works that land, but he makes his principal living traveling seven southeastern states and visiting farms to shear their flocks.

Like many of us, Hearne had no real idea that this is where life would lead him. “I never dreamed thirty-three years ago, when I was first doing this for a living, that I’d be shearing sheep thirty-three years later,” he says with a laugh. But he adds that he loves it.

A native of Pennsylvania, Hearne learned his trade from an old-time Iowan. Traveling shearers often take on helpers – apprentices, more or less, – that travel with them. That’s how Hearne learned. Then, in 1976, he came to the mountains.

His parents, who had been dairy farmers in Pennsylvania from 1938 until 1966, preceded him by a decade.

“I heard stories about a fellow in Fines Creek that could shear 100 sheep a day,” Hearne recalls. “I thought ‘there’s never been a bigger lie told in these mountains’, but then I saw him shear and I thought ‘OK, that’s different’”.

As he honed his skills, Hearne eventually doubled — nearly tripled — that number.

Now he travels with his son, Ben, a graduate of Earlham College, and they carry on what is becoming a family tradition. The shearing circuit is by no means high living, but they have a good time.

“We’ve got a lot of friends in a lot of places,” says Hearne. “Sometimes we camp out, sometimes we’re invited in. Because we’re sheep shearers, we’re obviously not in it for the money, so we’re generally trusted. We’re welcomed as someone who can do something that people really appreciate. And the people we meet are good. As a general rule, scoundrels don’t keep sheep.”

The economy of keeping sheep for wool is, at this point, poor. In the 1980’s the per pound price of wool started to fall, by the late 90’s it was desperately low – around 3 cents per pound. That was the beginning of the end. Three decades ago, Hearne says, wool sold for around one dollar per pound.

“Wool from your general cross-bred sheep isn’t worth much,” he says.

The main reason that many people keep flocks these days, he adds, is so they can maintain their land’s “agricultural” designation, which has tax advantages.

GEORGIA–A team of research scientists from five universities has discovered a new species of salamander, and has named the animal in honor of a retired Western Carolina University professor.

Patch-nosed Salamander. Photo courtesy Bill Peterman/Univ. of Georgia

The newly discovered salamander, which is the second-smallest salamander species in the U.S. and one of the smallest in the world at just two inches long, is now under study by a diverse group of researchers from several U.S. colleges. The team is searching for more of the salamanders, which are detailed in a new paper appearing in the Journal of Zoology.

The formal Latin name is Urspelerpes brucei for Richard Bruce, professor emeritus at Western Carolina University and a well-respected, longtime salamander researcher who has connections to many members of the research team.

Faculty members and graduate students from the University of Georgia, the University of Missouri, East Carolina University, Piedmont College and the University of California at Berkeley are involved.

The initial discovery was made in 2007 near Toccoa, GA, by a graduate student from Georgia, Joe Milanovich, and a grad student from Missouri, Bill Peterman. The students knew they’d found a species unique to the region, but it took some time to ascertain that it was indeed a new species.

An excerpt from a University of Georgia release:

“It is truly a once-in–a-lifetime opportunity to be involved in such a big find, particularly one right in our backyard,” Milanovich said. “The fact that it is such a unique animal makes it all the better and gives us more opportunity to continue to learn about the species. One of the best parts of being involved with this project is the collaboration that has come out of the species description, so I am excited to continue working with the other coauthors as we keep unpeeling the onion of U. brucei.”

The research team’s suggested common name is patch-nosed salamander, based on the lighter coloring on the tiny salamander’s nose. The formal Latin name is Urspelerpes brucei for Richard Bruce, professor emeritus at Western Carolina University and a well-respected, longtime salamander researcher who has connections to many members of the research team.

“Dr. Bruce has done much of the foundational work on stream salamander ecology in the region and on the evolution of miniaturization in salamanders, so naming this species after him is a good fit,” (Georgia’s John) Maerz said.

(Piedmont’s Carlos) Camp marveled at the find.

“This animal is so distinct that it belongs in its own genus, a taxonomic level used for grouping closely related species,” he said. “The real significance of this find is that it represents the first new genus of four-footed creature discovered in the United States in 50 years.”

Read the entire release here.