National Parks Traveler Episode 109: Great Smoky's Wildlife Corridors

By Kurt Repanshek - March 14th, 2021

Great Smoky Mountains National Park is an ideal place to see bear, elk and other mammals, large and small. But too often the place these wild animals are seen most is dead along the side of Interstate 40 in the Pigeon River Gorge, victims of a fragmented habitat combined with an increasing number of motor vehicles.

A collaborative effort to study wildlife mortality from motor vehicle collisions and find solutions for wildlife to safely cross this winding highway along the Pigeon River outside the national park is fully underway with nearly 100 stakeholders in North Carolina and Tennessee.

The Traveler’s Lynn Riddick reached out to Jeff Hunter, facilitator of the project, to learn how it will come to fruition and the greater benefits to us all when we create safe places for animals to cross roadways

:02 National Parks Traveler introduction
:12 Episode introduction with Kurt Repanshek
1:45 Shenandoah - Randy Petersen - The Sounds of Shenandoah
2:00 Western National Parks Association
2:23 Potrero Group
2:54 North Cascades Institute
3:12 Grand Teton National Park Foundation
3:49 Lynn Riddick discusses wildlife road crossings at Great Smoky Mountains National Park with Jeffrey Hunter from NPCA.
22:13 Almost Home - Randy Petersen - The Sounds of the Great Smoky Mountains
22:27 National Parks Traveler
22:41 Interior Federal Credit Union promotion
23:04 Friends of Acadia
23:30 Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation
23:54 Washington’s National Park Fund
24:33 Great Smoky Mountains' wildlife crossings with Lynn Riddick and Jeffrey Hunter continues
49:06 Wonder Lake - Various Artists - The Spirit of Alaska
49:26 Episode Closing
49:57 Orange Tree Productions
50:32 Splitbeard Productions
50:44 National Parks Traveler footer

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

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National Parks Traveler Podcast Episode 272 | Fossilized Parks

Have you ever closely inspected the landscape when you’re touring the National Park System, particularly in the West? You never know what you might find.
Back in 2010 a 7-year-old attending a Junior Ranger program at Badlands National Park spied a partially exposed fossil that turned out to be the skull of a 32-million-year-old saber-toothed cat.
If you’ve ever visited Petrified Forest National Park you’ve no doubt marveled over the colorful fossilized tree trunks. There are also fossilized trees on the northern range of Yellowstone National Park, but nowhere near as colorful.

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National Parks Traveler Podcast Episode 271 | Wolverine Recovery in Colorado

Wolverines, the largest land-dwelling members of the weasel family, once roamed across the northern tier of the United States, and as far south as New Mexico in the Rockies and southern California in the Sierra Nevada range. But after more than a century of trapping and habitat loss, wolverines in the lower 48 today exist only as small, fragmented populations in Idaho, Montana, Washington, Wyoming, and northeast Oregon.

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National Parks Traveler Podcast Episode 270 | Cultural Resource Challenge

Spur a discussion about traveling to a national park for a vacation and odds are that it will revolve around getting out into nature, looking for wildlife, perhaps honing your photography skills, or marveling at incredible vistas.
Will the discussion include destinations that portray aspects of the country’s history, or cultural melting pot?

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National Parks Traveler Podcast Episode 269 | Total Solar Eclipse of the Parks

Tens of millions of people in the United States will be able to witness a Total Solar Eclipse on Monday as the rare astronomical event cuts a path from Texas to Maine, up to 122 miles wide in some spots. This is a great opportunity to see the exact moment when the moon fully blocks the sun, creating a blazing corona visible to those observing from the center line of totality.

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National Parks Traveler Podcast Episode 268 | Music Inspired By The Parks

With March madness down to the Sweet 16, and Opening Day of Major League Baseball having arrived, we’re going to take a break this week and dive into our podcast archives for this week’s show.

This is Kurt Repanshek, your host at the National Parks Traveler. My NCAA bracket was busted the very first day, and while the Yankees won their opening day game against the Houston Astros, I don’t think they’ll go undefeated this year.

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The Essential RVing Guide

The National Parks RVing Guide, aka the Essential RVing Guide To The National Parks, is the definitive guide for RVers seeking information on campgrounds in the National Park System where they can park their rigs. It's available for free for both iPhones and Android models.

This app is packed with RVing specific details on more than 250 campgrounds in more than 70 parks.

You'll also find stories about RVing in the parks, some tips if you've just recently turned into an RVer, and some planning suggestions. A bonus that wasn't in the previous eBook or PDF versions of this guide are feeds of Traveler content: you'll find our latest stories as well as our most recent podcasts just a click away.

So whether you have an iPhone or an Android, download this app and start exploring the campgrounds in the National Park System where you can park your rig.