Displaying items by tag: ijams visitation
Hellbent Profile: Amber Parker brings nature to the people
Ijams Nature Center Executive Director Amber Parker poses with opossum Opal. She was an Ijams animal ambassador for more than three years. “She came to us after her mother was hit by a car and Opal would fit in the palm of your hand. Sadly, Opal passed away earlier this year. Opossums live short lives, usually about three years, so Opal had a nice long one by opossum standards. She was beloved by all and we miss her.” Courtesy Ijams Nature Center
Each year more than 600,000 people visit Ijams Nature Center
This is the second installment of an occasional series, Hellbent, profiling citizens who work to preserve and improve the Southern Appalachian environment.
KNOXVILLE — On any given day, the parking lot at Ijams Nature Center in South Knoxville is packed with cars, trucks, and buses as folks of all ages flock to hike, climb, swim and paddle its 300-plus acres of protected wildlands.
Making sure the center’s 620,000 or so annual visitors have a positive experience interacting with Mother Nature requires dozens of full-time employees plus a generous contingent of volunteers. Ensuring the complex operation stays on course and within its $1.8 million operating budget is a tough job, but Ijams Executive Director Amber Parker has been doing it for six years now and has no desire to be doing anything else.
When Amber talks about Ijams she fairly bursts with giddy, infectious energy. This is a woman who has clearly found her place in the world, and even a brief walk along any of the center’s 21 trails makes one wonder if the land itself hasn’t responded in like fashion to her devotion.
The days the Earth stood still (Part 2): South Knoxville’s Ijams Nature Center weathered Covid with grit, gifts and gratitude. Naturally.
Members of a Covid-era outdoor education class at Ijams Nature Center net insects. The South Knoxville nature center weathered the Covid-19 pandemic with donations, federal loan guarantees and common-sense maneuvering, like moving all educational programming outside. Photos courtesy Ijams Nature Center.
Ijams posted record visitation during pandemic even as resources were challenged
(This is the second in an occasional Hellbender Press series about the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the natural world. Here's the first installment about air quality improvements in the Smokies.)
Individuals and organizations can learn a lot from a pandemic.
You up your technology game. You innovate and run harder and get leaner. You realize the importance of face time (the real face time).
You learn the power of allies and those who really love you.
And in the case of Ijams Nature Center in South Knoxville, you learn just how much people need and value the natural world and the outdoors, especially in times of acute stress and uncertainty.
Ijams played host to a record number of visitors in 2020; there was no usual winter slowdown. Parking lots were full virtually every day during the height of the pandemic that claimed the lives of at least 600,000 people in the U.S. That visitation trend has continued at Ijams, with the coronavirus somewhat comfortably in the rear-view mirror.
An estimated 160,000 people visit the popular nature center annually, but there’s no exact count. Officials said the 2020 visitation substantially surpassed that number, and they plan a visitation study because a very “porous border” prevents an accurate count.
“The one great thing that has come out of Covid, is that people have recognized the importance of nature in their lives; they’ve recognized it as a place for solace, a place to get out and be safe and feel comfortable,” said Ijams Nature Center Executive Director Amber Parker.
“The sheer mass number of people coming were new to Ijams, or maybe come once or twice coming multiple times a week,” said Ijams Development Director Cindy Hassil.
“We were so excited to be this refuge for everyone,” Parker added.
The two women spoke on a sunny spring afternoon on the fetching expanse of stone terrace behind the visitors center in the shade of tulip poplars, red buds and dogwoods. Cardinals chirped and early 17-year cicadas throbbed behind a natural green curtain.