The Nickajack Naturalist

South Cumberland's Great Stone Door

Looking down through the Great Stone Door.

  One of the more popular natural attractions in the South Cumberland region is the Great Stone Door, located in the Savage Gulf State Natural Area near Beersheba Springs, TN in Grundy County.  This over 100 foot deep crack in the Cumberland Plateau escarpment was used for hundreds of years by Native Americans as a way to get between the plateau top and the Big Creek Gulf below.  I read somewhere that it was also used by buffalo, or bison, for the same pupose, as they once inhabited the Cumberland Plateau.

Looking up through the Great Stone Door.

  Today, the Big Creek Gulf Trail descends through the Stone Door, allowing hikers access to many miles of trails within Big Creek Gulf, Collins Gulf, and Savage Gulf.  These three gulfs run together as the headwaters of the Collins River works its way out of the plateau to eventually rendezvous with the Caney Fork River at Rock Island, which later empties into the Cumberland River at Carthage, TN.

View of Big Creek Gulf from Stone Door Overlook.

  The 15,590 acre Savage Gulf State Natural Area is a segment of the South Cumberland State Park, and contains over 55 miles of hiking trails and 10 primative campgrounds.

View from Laurel Gulf Overlook.

  The first 0.2 mile of the 0.9 mile trail to the Stone Door from the ranger station is paved and handicap accessible, and takes you to the Laurel Gulf Overlook and a great view.

Stone Door Overlook, at right, as seen from the Laurel Gulf Overlook.

View from the Sinks Overlook on the Big Creek Rim Trail.

  If you'd like a relatively easy five mile round trip hike from the Stone Door Ranger Station, continue on beyond the Stone Door for another 1.6 miles on the Big Creek Rim Trail, turning around at the Sinks Overlook.  The overlook isn't marked, but just watch for a spot where the trail is right on the edge of the bluff and there's a great view.

  The sinks referred to is a place on Big Creek far below where the creek goes underground for most of the year.  

Laurel Falls.

  For an added treat, take the 0.3 mile Laurel Falls Loop from the Stone Door Ranger Station to see Laurel Falls.  There's a descent over quite a flight of wooden steps to reach a deck overlooking the falls. Or if you'd rather not deal with the steps, you can follow the longer part of the loop to reach the falls.

Check out the following links for more information about Savage Gulf State Natural Area.

TDEC Div. of Natural Areas Savage Gulf page.

South Cumberland State Park official site.

Savage Gulf SNA Trail Map.

Friends of South Cumberland.

 

Bob Butters                                                         All photos:  Bob Butters

 

 

The Kimball Park Project--2013__July 20

We're over half way through the year now!  This is the seventh monthly installment in the project.  Summer is in full swing.  Click here to see the introductory post from January.  Compare the June issue here.

The Pond.  This view looks in the opposite direction of several earlier views, toward the interstate.  Some years, the ponds have much less water now, but not this year!  Not only is the pond still full of water, it obviously has a variety of lush vegetation, both on the shore and in the water.  I'm not seeing a lot in the way of waterfowl.  Maybe there's too much vegetation for their tastes, or perhaps there's just too many other options for them this summer.

The Tree.  This month, the big red oak has some company, a stack of large bales of wheat hay from the adjacent field.  I've read that sometimes it's more profitable to bale wheat for hay than to harvest it for the grain.

The Field.  Finally, the field in the park (on the left) has been planted in no-till soybeans.  The wheat in the field on the right has been cut for hay, which we see stacked by the oak tree in the preceding photo. That field has also been planted in soybeans as well as corn, which we can see in the background.  My assistants, Lucy and Camo (in the center with just the tip of her tail and head visible) are helping me scout scenes.

  Soybeans are Tennessee's number one cash crop, with over one million acres planted in the state annually, most in middle and western Tennessee. They are used as ingredients in feed for cattle, poultry, swine, fish, and other animals.  Humans also consume soybeans in tofu, soy sauce, soy flour, soybean oil, margarine, salad dressings, and mayonnaise.  In addition, soybeans are used in crayons, newspaper ink, plastics, bio-diesel, and more.  The U.S. grows more soybeans than any other country, with about half being exported around the world.

  According to the UT Institute of Agriculture, over 80% of soybeans in Tennessee are grown in no-till or conservation tillage systems, with about 30% double cropped after wheat.  Soybeans are a member of the legume family.

The Mountain.  With the heavily vegetated pond in the foreground, a late afternoon haze settles over the mountain.

The River.  The high water mark resulting from recent increased river flow can easily be seen along the shore of Burns Island.

Random Shot - Crayfish Mound.  Crayfish, aka crawfish or crawdads, are freshwater crustaceans and exist on all continents except Africa and Antarctica.  400 species are found in North America, with 78 of those in Tennessee.  They build these distinctive mounds in muddy areas, this one being one of quite a few I discovered in an area of the park which had recently been flooded by one of the ponds.  Growing up in the coastal plain of southern Alabama, I was used to seeing many of these, but not so much in the Cumberlands of Tennessee.

Click here to learn more about crayfish on TWRA's crayfish resource page.

 

Be sure to check back next month for another installment of the Kimball Park Project-2013.

Bob Butters                                                                                          All photos:  Bob Butters    

Land Conservation and the Economy

Grundy County's Savage Gulf State Natural Area, which attracts hikers,tourists, and new residents drawn to the natural beauty of the South Cumberland region.                                             Photo:  Bob Butters

 

  In southern Appalachia, particularly the Blue Ridge and Cumberland Plateau regions, there are occasional discussions about land conservation and its effect on local economies.  The conventional wisdom is that publicly owned is taken out of the tax base, thus limiting income for local governments. Thus it was with considerable interest that I read a June 9 article in the C.S. Monitor about the effect of land conservation on jobs in the Rocky Mountains.

 According to the article, a new generation of entrepreneurs, drawn by the natural amenities and outdoor recreation opportunities of the Rocky Mountains, are moving to small cities and towns throughout the region.  The article states "These software engineers, biotech researchers, medical specialists, outdoor-gear manufacturers, and day traders are being joined by a wave of retirees who want to take advantage the outdoor lifestyle and relatively inexpensive living costs.  Together, economists say, they helped the Mountain West enter the recession later than other parts of the U.S. and come out of it sooner."  

  Ray Rasker, at Headwaters Economics, a think tank in Bozeman, MT, is quoted as saying "The notion used to be that if you weren't mining the landscape of its ore, or cutting down forest for its trees, or covering the range with cattle, you were doing something wrong and your economy would stagnate.  But Bozeman and a handful of other communities in the West have evolved beyond that frontier mind-set. They're thriving not in spite of being surrounded by protected public lands and putting certain kinds of development off limits, but because of it."

  The article goes on to state that according to a Headwaters Economics study, in partnership with Stanford University, Western rural counties with little or no protected federal lands increased employment by 83 percent over the past 40 years, while those counties with more than 30 percent of their land protected increased job creation by 345 percent during that same period.  It is estimated that 95 percent of the net new jobs in the region are professional service positions, rather than low paying fast food jobs and such.

  Rasker argues that towns in the West need to "understand the relationship between a healthy ecology and a healthy economy and to develop, to the extent they can, stable industries, such as tourism, recreation, and Knowledge Age businesses, that take advantage of the natural amenities."

  While there are undoubtedly differences between the Rocky Mountian West and the Appalachian South, I firmly believe some of the principles disussed here could be applied to our region.  Looking at our local area, there are some interesting statistics from the Tourism Institute at the University of Tennessee concerning tourism spending in the recession of 2009.  In Marion County, while overall retail spending was down by 9.7%, tourism spending decreased by only 0.9%.  In Grundy County, tourism spending decreased by 6.3%, compared to a 12.6% decrease in other consumer retail spending.  Hamilton County experienced a 12.8% decrease in retail spending, with only a 3.4% drop in tourism spending.  This would seem to indicate that the more a county or region can capitalize on its outdoor recreation and tourism potential, the better off it will be economically.

  I'm sure the topic of land conservation and its effect on the economy will continue to be discussed from various perspectives, but I just wanted to add some food for thought.  

Bob Butters

 

Egg Laying Turtle

                                                                                                 Photo: Bob Butters

  Last week, I encountered this turtle (a river cooter, I believe) laying eggs in a Haletown lawn near Nickajack Lake.  I spotted three other turtle nests in the same yard.  They're only visible as a small round patch of mud in the grass.  This turtle, which I estimate to be about 12 inches long, likely laid from 10 to 25 eggs in a hole she dug with her hind legs, which will probabaly hatch in August or September.  When she had finished, she filled the hole back in with mud and hustled back to the lake.

Visit the Tennessee Watchable Wildlife website to learn more about turtles in Tennessee.

Bob Butters

                                                                                                 Photo:  Bob Butters 

Marion County Springs Host Endangered Species - Revisit

  The following post about my visit to Sequatchie Cave State Natural Area was originally published on March 25.   Click here to read a more in-depth article about Sequatchie Cave from June 30 by Jenni Frankenberg Veal at Nooga.com.  

On March 12th Daniel Carter, Director of Environmental Studies at Sewanee, invited me to join him and Kirk Zigler, an entomologist and Associate Professor of Biology at Sewanee; TWRA's Chief of Biodiversity, Bill Reeves; and TDEC Natural Heritage Division zoologist, David Withers on an outing to Sequatchie Cave to look for and identify a couple of endangered species.  We were met at the cave by local resident Raymond Epperson.

Sequatchie Cave is the source of Owen Spring Branch, which according to a report (Download Royal snail 2000 report FINAL (3)) from the TN Division of Natural Heritage is one of only two locations where the endangered Royal snail (Pyrgulopsis ogmorphaphe) is known to exist.  The other site is the Blue Hole Spring and Town Creek in Jasper.

Sequatchie Cave is located in the Town of Sequatchie on ten acres designated as the Sequatchie Cave State Natural Area.  Owen Spring Branch is also home to the rare Sequatchie caddisfly (Glyphopsyche sequatchie).

The little horizontal thing near the center top of the photo is a Sequatchie caddisfly larva.  It has encased itself in tiny sticks, etc.  The others that look like tiny corn cobs with legs on one end are another species of caddisfly larvae.  Their cases are made of tiny pebbles.  The little black dot slightly left of center that looks like a large grain of black sand is the Royal snail.

According to a joint University of Tennessee/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report (Download Sequatchie Caddisfly Status Survey_Final 2013 (4)), the Sequatchie caddisfly was discovered in the Owen Spring Branch at Sequatchie Cave in 1994.  In addition to this site, it has only been confirmed at two other springs in Marion County.  They may possibly exist in a few other locations.

What looks like black pebbles on the bottom of Owen Spring Branch is actually the much more common periwinkle snail.

The Sequatchie Cave State Natural Area is also home to a number of other species, such as several different crayfish, millipeds, bats, and more.  While there, I witnessed a lone bat fly out of the cave and then return.

Over the course of the day, the group discussed a conservation strategy for the Sequatchie caddisfly, the recovery plan for the Royal snail, and a plan to control the beaver population on Town Creek in Jasper in order to benefit the snails.

On this last point, I'll admit I personally have mixed feelings, as beavers are one of my favorite animals and I believe their work benefits other wildlife.  But I suppose there may be cases, such as this, where controlling them is best for a particular ecosystem.

Bob Butters                                                                                                   All photos:  Bob Butters