NATCHEZ TRACE — The 2024 Tennessee Environmental Education Association annual conference is set for Sept. 19-21 at Natchez Trace State Park.

The conference is open to any adult interested in education with the natural world as the foundation. Earn up to 31 PD/CE credits and network with an amazing and diverse group of educators from across Tennessee. The conference welcomes K-12 formal educators, informal educators, and more.

Certified master bander Mark Armstrong tends gently to a tufted titmouse shortly before turning his attention to a hummingbird at the 2021 Ijams Hummingbird Festival, set this year for Aug. 17.  Thomas Fraser/Hellbender Press

KNOXVILLE — Ijams Nature Center’s 14^th annual Ijams Hummingbird Festival: A Celebration of Wings will bring back its popular marketplace and add new activities to its offerings from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. Aug. 17.

A general admission ticket provides access to educational booths and activities, dip netting, live animal encounters, and a kids’ nature zone where children and families can create arts projects and crafts, conduct experiments, and more. Community science opportunities, guided nature walks, and new hands-on workshops also will be offered.

General admission tickets are $12 for adults (ages 13+) and $9 for children ages 3-12. Children under 3 are free. Ijams Nature Center members receive a 10 percent discount on the festival ticket price.

This year’s festival also brings back the marketplace, featuring handcrafted art, nature-themed items, local plants, and garden décor, as well as speaker sessions.

Attendees can choose to schedule a bird-banding demonstration for an additional charge. Each small group will get the opportunity for an up-close look at a hummingbird or another bird in a small-group setting with master bander Mark Armstrong. He will weigh, measure, band, and talk about the birds before allowing one person in each group to release the bird.

Bird banding demonstrations are offered in 30-minute sessions starting at 7 a.m.; the last appointment is 12 p.m. Your best chance to see a ruby-throated hummingbird being banded is during the earlier appointments.

The 14^th annual Ijams Hummingbird Festival: A Celebration of Wings is sponsored by Accenture, HomeTrust Bank, Stanley’s Greenhouse, Tennessee Wildlife Federation, and Wild Birds Unlimited Maryville.

MARYVILLE — Come hang out on Little River with friends and family and learn about river life with the scientists and staff of Conservation Fisheries Inc. and Little River Watershed Association. 

The educational fun kicks off at noon July 27 with the start of shuttled floats down Little River ending back at River Johns, 4134 Cave Mill Road. (Bring your own personal flotation device).

Guided snorkeling (masks and snorkels provided) in the river at River Johns begins at 3 p.m. The day wraps up with food from Tarik’s North African, or you can bring your own picnic.

The photos of the Thompson Brothers, namely Jim Thompson, helped galvanize support for the establishment of Great Smoky Mountains National Park along the Tennessee-North Carolina border. The photo is undated, but was likely taken in the 1930s. The original caption note from the photographer reads: “Most of the streams in the Great Smokies are entirely safe for drinking purposes. The water flows from deep-shaded mountain sides, free from human contamination, and it is well aerated as it dashes wildly down the steep mountain sides. Even during the hottest days of summer, the water is so cold that it will cause one’s hands to ache if held in the water for a few minutes.”  University of Tennessee Libraries/Thompson Brothers Collection

Knoxville History Project observes 100th anniversary of a key meeting and month in Great Smoky Mountains history

KNOXVILLE ­— Parts of the mountains were broken, but it was all beautiful, and many artists and writers long took careful note of the rugged, remote rainforest to the southeast of the city.

Decades before modern scientific endeavors like the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory began documenting the wondrous, mountainous biodiversity of what was to become Great Smoky Mountains National Park, photographers, writers, journalists, naturalists and artists, including many from Knoxville, extolled the virtues of the relatively lofty blue-green mountains seen in silhouette from the city.

Much of the land was scarred by logging and erosion; much was not, and its beauty, frozen in a frame or penned to a page, spoke for itself through countless artists.

Their early 20th-century renderings of the Smokies, from prose to photographs, amazed critical federal officials and the public and helped close the complex deal on what is now the most visited national park in the United States. 

The Knoxville History Project is offering a series of events and symposium set for July 25-27, centered around the East Tennessee History Center on Gay Street, that will recognize the varied efforts of historical Knoxvillians to boost the concept of the national park through multimedia arts, science and journalism. 

Katheryn Albrecht holds a juvenile American kestrel just prior to releasing it into the Wildwood area of Blount County as part of the Farmland Raptor Project.  Thomas Fraseer/Hellbender Press

Farmland Raptor Project takes wing to expand raptor populations on private properties

WILDWOOD — She felt the bird in her hand in her heart as the kestrel strained toward freedom.

Elise Eustace, communications director for Foothills Land Conservancy, blessed the bird and let it go, free to make a home somewhere on the 300-acre Andy Harris Farm or elsewhere in the Wildwood area of Blount County. “I’ve never gotten to do something like this,” she said. “So exciting.” 

Two other juvenile kestrels joined their kin on the warm summer afternoon, lighting into nearby oaks and atop a telephone line above the red and yellow pollinator gardens and dry pasture and cornfield and copses that punctuate the property in the shadow of smoky knobs that rise gradually to the Smokies crest beyond the blue-green hollows of the Little River watershed. Resident sparrows, bluebirds and kingbirds voiced displeasure at the new arrivals. 

NASHVILLE — The annual Tennessee Urban Forestry Council conference is set for Nov. 14-15 at the Scarritt Bennett Center. 

This year’s theme is Under One Canopy, which will highlight how individuals, organizations and municipalities are engaging with diverse stakeholders and cross-sector partners to make an impact in Tennessee communities through urban forestry. Confrence attendees will celebrate achievements from across the state, exchange ideas and learn from the latest urban forestry studies and stories.

Full registration and lodging details will be announced soon.

KINGSTON SPRINGS — The 2024 Dinner IN the Creek, a fundraiser for the Harpeth Conservancy, will be nestled in the serene beauty of Bell’s Reserve in Kingston Springs. This hidden oasis, with over a mile of Harpeth River waterfront, offers a unique setting for the event in a charming spring-fed creek at the heart of the 600-acre property.

This year’s Dinner IN the Creek, sponsored by Amazon, is set for 6-9 p.m. July 23. Tickets are $500 and include a Hispanic-roots dinner from renowned chefs and live entertainment from Brother and the Hayes.

Harpeth Conservancy’s vision is clean water and healthy ecosystems for rivers in Tennessee championed by the people who live here. 

In this image from a social media video, a woman and child are seen outside the Bearskin Lodge in Gatlinburg. Biologists have concluded the bear is too habituated to humans and plans call for trapping and euthanizing the animal.  Hellbender Press

The incident caught outside a Gatlinburg hotel was not “normal bear behavior” and relocation of a fed, fearless bear isn’t an option

KNOXVILLE — John Nolt, a member of the Sierra Club’s Harvey Broome Group executive committee and professor emeritus in philosophy at the University of Tennessee, will present a program about cryptocurrencies and their detrimental long-term effects on the environment. Cryptocurrency “mines” (data centers, really) pull enormous quantities of power from the electrical grid.

Thus they are attracted to states like Tennessee where electric power is relatively cheap.

The event is set for 7-8:30 p.m. June 11 at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, 2931 Kingston Pike, Knoxville.

Andrew Zimmerman

KNOXVILLE — Join Conservation Fisheries, Inc. and other experts for a discussion on how to HEAD UNDERWATER to snorkel and enjoy the beautiful underwater biodiversity of the Southern Appalachians.

The free event is set for 6-8 p.m. June 15 at Remedy Coffee, 800 Tyson Place, Knoxville.

The panel will be led by CFI Director Bo Baxter; Casper Cox from Hidden Rivers of Southern Appalachia; Jennifer Webster from Little River Watershed Association; and TVA Fisheries Biologist Justin Wolbert.