The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy invites people to join the “Clean Energy Generation.”

We’re gaining momentum as a movement that is rising to one of the greatest challenges of our time: the climate crisis. We’re pushing for new policies and practices and taking action, no matter how small — because it takes small ripples from people at all levels of engagement to create a tsunami of change.

At the second Clean Energy Generation webinar, SACE staff, including Executive Director, Dr. Stephen A. Smith, Climate Advocacy Director Chris Carnevale, and Climate Advocacy Coordinator Cary Ritzler, will talk about what the “Clean Energy Generation” is and how you can play a role, no matter your age, abilities, income or zip code. 

SACE’s Executive Director will also share the ways he is taking clean energy action in his home, and how you don’t have to be an expert to connect with your community and make meaningful change: learning more is a good place to start. We’ll also show how small groups of neighbors, students and friends are coming together to accomplish specific climate-actions goals. And we’ll have time on the webinar to answer your questions.

Can’t make it? Register anyway and we’ll send you the recording plus a few follow-up resources.

The Clean Energy Generation is motivated by what our daily lives, communities, country, and planet will look like when clean energy replaces decades of dirty pollution from fossil fuels. We are working together for communities powered by clean energy with good jobs, clean air and water, clean transportation, a stable climate and affordable bills, where all of us can thrive.

American wild turkey populations have recovered from historic lows. TWRA still needs help managing the modern populations.  Courtesy Eric Lowery via Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency

TWRA wants you to help build research on USA’s second bird

Turkeys and bald eagles both grace the state and Southeast and have a notably parallel history of climbing from dire straits nationwide. 

The bald eagle became the national symbol on the U.S. seal in 1782. 

Declaration of Independence signer Franklin said he would have preferred a different bird. While he may have been joking, he never lobbied for it publicly. His comments in a letter to his daughter, Sarah, have become infamous.

“For my own part I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country. He is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead tree, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labour of the fishing hawk; and when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish, and is bearing it to his nest for the support of his mate and young ones, the bald eagle pursues him, and takes it from him … the turkey is in comparison a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America.” 

OAK RIDGE — Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning will for the second year host a group of volunteers from Transformation Church on July 15 at the Worthington Cemetery Ecological Study Area to remove Dahurian buckthorn and other invasive species. This is the second year of help at the site from church members, and is one of several service projects church members will conduct throughout the Knoxville area. Volunteers will also help pick up litter and do some trail work.

Additional volunteers are needed to work with the Transformation Church group. We’ll meet at Elza Gate Park in Oak Ridge at 10 a.m. and plan to work until 2 p.m.; a pizza lunch will be provided. Bring bug spray and loppers and/or clippers, and wear sturdy shoes and clothing. Minors will need a parent’s/guardian’s signature on a waiver form (to be provided) in order to participate. For additional information, contact Jimmy Groton at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

— Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning

Pollinator Pathway signs on the Tennessee Aquarium Plaza in Chattanooga lead guests on a self-guided tour highlighting native plants, pollinator behaviors, and unusual pollinators. Courtesy Tennessee Aquarium

TDOT joins with Tennessee Aquarium to pollinate our pathways

CHATTANOOGA — With their distinctive orange and black patterns, gossamer wings and harrowing 3,000-mile migrations, few insects are as charismatic or beloved as the monarch butterfly. 

Just imagine how tragic it would be if they disappeared.

So it was with alarm in 2022 that the world received news that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) had declared the monarch an endangered species, citing population numbers that had fallen 80 percent since the 1980s. 

Similar anxiety met reports in the mid-2000s of colony collapse disorder. This sudden phenomenon dramatically imperiled the survival of European honey bees, whose activity directly or indirectly affects roughly one of every three bites of food we eat, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Pollinators are undoubtedly critically important to plants and humans alike, whether they’re investigating our Irises, calling on our Columbine, or buzzing our Blueberry bushes. This week, June 19-25, the world celebrates Pollinator Week, which recognizes the wondrous, vital contributions of butterflies, bees, moths, bats, and other pollinators.

Help TWRA save our pine snakes

NASHVILLE — If you see a vanishing northern pine snake, biologists with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) want to know.

One subspecies of the pine snake, (Pituophis melanoleucus melanoleucus), lives in Tennessee. The snake is considered “threatened” by TWRA due to habitat loss and fragmentation, road mortality, and humans who kill the snakes because they mistake them for timber rattlesnakes.

Brian Flock, biodiversity coordinator for TWRA, said the reports will help the agency find out about the threatened snakes’ habitat and behavior.

“For years we’ve tried to find them. Because of their secretive nature, they’re hard to find,” he said. “We don’t know in Tennessee where they live, how they move around, those kinds of things.” He said they mostly seem to exist in West Tennessee but have been spotted as far east as Knoxville. TWRA, he said, may use the public’s information to add radio tracking devices to the snakes.