1 of 4
Turk’s Cap lilies
Bright orange candelabras of Turk’s Cap lilies (Lilium superbum) light up parkway roadsides in summer. Although normally lovers of moist meadows and mountain coves, these lilies occur near Mt. Mitchell Parking Overlook (milepost 349.9), at 4,825 feet.
2 of 4
Reindeer Lichen and Moss
A clump of reindeer lichen and moss glitters in the late sunlight near Devils Garden Overlook (Mile Marker 235.7). Brittle when conditions are dry, it softens after rain.
3 of 4
Beaver Dam
Busy beavers have created habitat for themselves at Price Lake (Mile Marker 296.7), and in the process have flooded the trail that circles the lake.
4 of 4
Turk’s Cap lilies
Bright orange candelabras of Turk’s Cap lilies (Lilium superbum) light up parkway roadsides in summer. Although normally lovers of moist meadows and mountain coves, these lilies occur near Mt. Mitchell Parking Overlook (milepost 349.9), at 4,825 feet.
The 469-mile Blue Ridge Parkway has about 400 road crossings, each one a "pathway for exotics." Here's at look at how parkway officials are working to protect nearly 5,000 species.
I think of it as "The List." Bambi Teague, chief of resource management and science for the Blue Ridge Parkway, calls it "Bragging Rights." We are talking about the same thing: the astonishing biodiversity that keeps the parkway at or near the top of the list of the 392 units in the National Park System in terms of plant and animal species that it supports.
At a multi-day conference in Boone, N.C. in April – one of two scheduled for 2010 in connection with the parkway's 75th anniversary – three or four speakers recited the list. And no wonder. The parkway is home to nine federally listed species and 14 species of federal concern. Its flora includes more than 2,000 species of vascular plants, 400 mosses and more than 100 kinds of trees. It supports more than 2,000 types of fungi, as well as 67 mammal, 93 fish, 43 amphibian, 40 reptile and 227 bird species.
For a park that is "thought of essentially as a road, this is huge," Teague says, "though when you think about it, it's not so surprising."
Why? Although its acreage is dwarfed by other parks (compare its 95,000 acres to the Smokies' half million, Olympia's 900,000-plus, or Yellowstone's 2.2 million acres), its "geographic range is large. In terms of changes in latitude and longitude, the Blue Ridge Parkway is the third largest park in the system." Along its 470-mile length, it intersects 15 watersheds. It contains 600 miles of streams, more than 150 wetlands and bogs and more than 300 seeps. Sixteen of its peaks rise above 5,000 feet, and it bisects six of 11 major sites supporting southern Appalachian spruce-fir forests. Sometimes-abrupt elevation changes occur regularly as the parkway climbs toward summits winds through gaps and descends to cross the James, Roanoke, Linville and French Broad rivers. Overall, its elevation ranges from 600 to 6,000 feet.
"Rare species occur in rare habitats and the parkway has many rare habitats," she says.
That's the good news. The bad news is that the parkway, with its narrow right-of-way, limited backcountry acreage, and the highest annual visitation of any unit in the National Park System, is more vulnerable to threats to its biodiversity than parks "where the land is concentrated and the roads are few," Teague says. "Practically all of the park's acreage is easily accessible from the roadway."
Additionally, 400 power lines and an equal number of roads cross the parkway. Each is a "corridor for exotics" that threaten to displace native species, says Lillian McElrath, a resource management and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) compliance specialist who coordinates the parkway's integrated pest management program and does utility and roads right-of-way work.
Despite its splendid biodiversity and mounting threats to it, the parkway has only a minuscule staff whose job it is to protect its natural resources. When Teague hired on in 1984, she was its only biologist. So she remained until 1994, when five "district people" were hired. Three of them – McElrath, Tom Davis and Bob Cherry – still work for her (another retired this year). Plant ecologist Chris Ulrey came aboard 11 years ago; Herbert Young was recently hired as permits coordinator. A handful of seasonal employees is hired annually and volunteers help with some projects. Mostly, though, it's up to Ulrey, Cherry, Davis and McElrath, each of whom wears many hats, to help one another out as they inventory, monitor and protect the park's biodiversity.
Davis, whose home base is in Virginia, oversees the parkway's agricultural lease program and also monitors "nuisance animal species." He has a lot to contend with. Coyotes are a growing presence. Wild hogs are infiltrating the parkway's southernmost land, probably from the Smokies, where they have been a problem for years. Whitetail deer populations have exploded in Virginia, particularly at Peaks of Otter. Black bear sightings are increasing up and down the parkway. (In the summer of 2009, bear problems closed the picnic area at Craggy Gardens for several months.)
Davis and Cherry confer about ways to adjust agricultural lease agreements to help declining grassland bird species. (Delaying haying in some fields until young bobolinks and several sparrow species have fledged is one strategy.) Cherry, who works out of the parkway's Blowing Rock station, is responsible for rare animal species. In winter, he and McElrath check nest boxes for the presence of the federally-listed subspecies of the northern flying squirrel at high elevation sites near Mt. Mitchell, Mt. Pisgah and in the Great and the Plott Balsams. During the summer months he's tracked bog turtles. When they can, he and McElrath conduct butterfly surveys.
Ulrey, based in Asheville, must find time to fight forest pests and protect rarities. His responsibilities range from controlling current invaders like gypsy moth and hemlock woolly adelgid to proactively protecting against future ones like the emerald ash borer. He conducts long-term monitoring projects aimed at protecting rare plant communities, inventories plant species and maintains records of management activities. Because he's an arborist, chainsaw training and identifying hazard trees also falls to him.
In the summer of 2010, the natural resources staff began a huge new project: an intensive, three-year wetlands survey from which they will develop a wetlands management plan. "The park has never actively managed its wetlands," Ulrey says. "We don't even have an exhaustive inventory of them." He estimates their number at "150 to 250, ranging in size from a half acre to 30 acres. There are high- and low-elevation wetlands; some are sunny and open, others are forested."
Over three years, he will map their size and location; inventory them; look for rare species and threats (beavers, erosion, exotics, land use beyond the park boundary that affects water draining into the wetlands); establish hydrology wells to monitor water levels; and begin long term monitoring of rare wetland plant species the survey uncovers.
Cherry is trapping for small mammals and crayfish, conducting night censuses of aquatic invertebrates, identifying frogs by their calls and observing dragonflies and butterflies. With the help of a seasonal employee, he lays down coverboards for reptiles and salamanders to take refuge (and be discovered) under. When he can, he checks out rocky seeps, non-wetland habitats that are also favored by salamanders. He conducts weeklong surveys of wetlands located near one another; the next week he moves to a new location and does the same thing.
Actively managing wetlands is important because so many have been lost and those that remain are isolated.
"Before European settlement, there were lots of beavers, which meant that there were also lots of linked wetlands in various stages of development," Ulrey says. "Wetland plants that were flooded when beavers built a new dam could establish elsewhere. Now, when beavers flood out a wetlands, it is of great concern to us, because, as land becomes more fragmented, it is harder and harder for plants to recolonize elsewhere. The parkway's current policy on beavers is to leave them alone unless they threaten the motor road or a structure. That policy may change as the wetlands management plan is developed."
The information gleaned through the three-year project will help the natural resources staff "determine what condition parkway wetlands are in," he says. "We'll be looking for patterns – for instance, the presence of multiflora rose or cattle – in the wetlands, and will draw up plans to address specific types of problems."
Another List: Threats to Parkway Biodiversity
Parkway chief of resource management and science Bambi Teague lists the four biggest threats to Blue Ridge Parkway biodiversity:
1. Exotic plants and forest pests. The parkway cannot handle all threats posed by exotic plants (among the worst problems: oriental bittersweet, microstegium, Chinese yam, coltsfoot, Japanese spirea, honeysuckle and wisteria, tree of heaven, princess tree, garlic mustard and kudzu), so it developed an exotic-plant management plan five or six years ago that established high-elevation sites and wetlands as top priority areas for fighting invasives. Forest pests the parkway is fighting include the hemlock woolly adelgid and gypsy moth.
2. Trampling by visitors and poaching. "Unfortunately," Teague says, "the classic tourism promotional photo shows visitors right out on the edges of rock ledges, which is where many of our rare species occur. Trampling also occurs along trails."
3. Land development along the parkway. In some areas, adjacent landowners are bushwhacking to reach parkway trails, which provide additional corridors for exotics to migrate onto parkway lands. Development "is a viewshed issue, but it also has the effect of squashing whatever is rare and exotic onto parkway land," Teague says.
4. Air pollution and global warming. Because it wasn't listed as a Class 1 airshed under the Clean Air Act, the parkway does not monitor air quality, although air pollution compromises views. "Climate change is the big elephant in the room," says parkway plant ecologist Chris Ulrey. "There are models all over the place that, while they disagree about the kinds of changes that will take place, all agree that vegetation is going to change here. As for when the changes will take place, that's the other big question. Potentially, climate change could dwarf all other issues and radically change the rules of the game."
Find out more about what Blue Ridge Parkway staff is doing to protect biodiversity.