Smoky Mountains News

Authorities cut open a slain bear and found a shoe lost by a Florida man while fighting off a bear that attacked his 8-year-old son in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The footwear was discovered in the black bear's stomach during a necropsy at the University of Tennessee Veterinary Medical Center, Smokies spokeswoman Nancy Gray said Monday.

GATLINBURG, Tenn. - Officials at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park say a black bear mauled an 8-year-old Florida boy and the boy's father was injured while defending him. Park rangers later killed a bear matching the description of the one in the attack. Park spokesman Bob Miller says the incident began around 7:30 p.m. Monday when the bear approached Evan Pala of Boca Raton, Florida, while he was playing in a creek. Miller says the bear attacked the boy, was driven off and came back a second time.

Last month U.S Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) declared he will cosponsor bipartisan legislation to acquire more funding desperately needed by Great Smoky Mountain National Park and other national parks nationwide.At the request of President Ronald Reagan, Alexander was Chairman of the President’s Commission on Americans Outdoors in the 1980s. He is currently a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which oversees national park funding.

A new Web site will be one of the ways the Great Smoky Mountains National Park celebrates its 75th anniversary next year. The Web site, www.greatsmokies75th.org, will be used as a tool to help better inform the public of the events coinciding with the anniversary. Park officials describe the site as a "one-stop shop." By providing a detailed schedule and description of events, the Web site will help visitors plan their trips around events the park is offering next year.

ASHEVILLE – A project documenting all living creatures in Great Smoky Mountains National Park has led to the discovery of nearly 900 new species, furthering science, education and public interest in conservation, a group of panelists testified Monday. The success and importance of the 10-year-old All Taxa Biodiversity Project, the largest natural history survey ever undertaken in the United States, came Monday during a Senate subcommittee field hearing at UNC Asheville.

Sixty-three year old Diane Scarbrough loves to spend time in the Smoky Mountains. "Anybody that can be out there for any length of time," she says. "It's uplifting." Diane's passion for hiking turned into a mission to hike every mile of trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. "We call it the 900 mile club. Actually it comes out to be 845, but I think they round that off because it takes a long time to get to a trail. We may hike 4 miles to get to the trail we are hiking on," Diane explains.

U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) today announced he will cosponsor bipartisan legislation to create a new source of funding for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and other national parks across the country as part of the “Centennial Challenge” celebrating the 100th anniversary of the National Park System in 2016.

It's considered really poor form if your face falls off. So officials from a couple of federal agencies have come together to perform a little preventive maintenance on a well-known geological feature in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to make sure it lasts for future generations and does not become a safety hazard.

East Tennessee's natural beauty draws tourists from all over the country, but a two-day conference that began Monday focused on making sure that doesn't change. The 2008 Great Smoky Mountains Sustainable Tourism Summit featured a power-packed lineup of politicians, policymakers and journalists, including the editor of a magazine that has been critical of the Smokies.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park can be the engine to propel new eco-friendly tourism for gateway communities in Tennessee and North Carolina, according to participants at a regional conference on "sustainable tourism." That's both an opportunity and a challenge for such communities as Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge and Cherokee, N.C., and for the country's most-visited national park itself.

"The start of the Centennial Challenge is a perfect kickoff to National Park Week and brings other needed improvements for more than 100 additional sites across the nation," Alexander explained. "As we approach the 100th anniversary of the National Park System, we need to keep looking for big ideas - like the president's Centennial Challenge - that will aid efforts to preserve and celebrate the great American outdoors."