Botanist Tim Spira will show beautiful photographs of common and not-so-common spring wildflowers in the Blue Ridge Mountains including trilliums, trout lily, wild ginger, mayapple, bearcorn, Jack-in-the-pulpit, pink lady's slipper, Oconee bells, Carolina silverbell, yellow buckeye, spicebush, and pawpaw. Along the way, he'll describe interesting features of wildflowers including interactions between plants and their pollinators, herbivores, and frugivores. 

Tim Spira is a plant ecologist and professor emeritus of botany at Clemson University where he taught field botany and plant ecology for 22 years. He received a Ph.D. in botany from UC Berkeley and conducted post-doctoral research on plant-pollinator interactions. Tim has published numerous papers in scientific journals and is the author of the award-winning book, Wildflowers & Plant Communities of the Southern Appalachian Mountains & Piedmont. His latest book, Waterfalls & Wildflowers in the Southern Appalachians, will be available for purchase and signing.

Join us for a very special program on the inspiring story of how a beloved seabird was restored to long-abandoned nesting colonies off the Maine coast. The National Audubon Society initiated Project Puffin to restore the Atlantic Puffin to historic nesting islands in the Gulf of Maine. Dr. Stephen Kress, National Audubon Society's Vice President for Bird Conservation and director of the Audubon Seabird Restoration Program, began the project to re-populate Egg Island in 1973. Derrick Jackson will describe how this four-decade quest helped save birds around the world and raised fresh questions about preserving birds in the face of new threats, most notably, climate change. 

Derrick Jackson and Dr. Stephen Kress co-authored the 2015 book, Project Puffin: The Improbable Quest to Bring a Beloved Seabird Back to Egg Rock. Jackson first covered the early efforts of researcher Dr. Kress and Project Puffin in 1986 as a reporter at Newsday in New York. A former Associate Editor at the Boston Globe, Jackson is a 2001 commentary finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is also a recognized photographer whose presidential campaign images of Barack Obama were exhibited by Boston's Museum of African American History. Currently a resident of Cambridge, Massachusetts, he is a journalist, a public radio essayist and a consultant with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy, in partnership with the NC Wildlife Resources Commission, will lead a volunteer workday on a SAHC conservation tract adjoining the Sandy Mush Game Lands. Volunteers will help remove trash and old tires, and inventory hemlock health. The property is important for conservation because it forms a wildlife corridor between non-contiguous portions of the state-owned game lands. Last year, volunteers removed 232 tires, 46 contractor bags of household trash, and many more odd relics, including a convertible in its many parts. More debris remains - and you can help. For more info or to volunteer, contact Jesse Wood at [email protected].