news from the forest - bladencounty.comnews from the forest visitor hours mid-march through...
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NEWS FROM THE FOREST
Visitor Hours
Mid-March through Mid-November
8:00a.m. to 5:00p.m.
Monday through Friday
Saturdays by request
4803 Sweet Home Church Rd.
Elizabethtown, NC 28337
(910) 588-4161
In This Issue
Welcome to our new
newsletter!
The outdoor class-
room
Birds galore!
Let’s go Geocaching!
Events @ TCESF
Our Welcome Sign on Sweet Home Church Road
Greetings from Turnbull Creek! This August, Turnbull Creek Educational State Forest (TCESF) is launch-ing its first newsletter called “News from the Forest.” In this newsletter, we will be letting our forest fans know about all the happenings at TCESF, what upcoming events we have planned, and much, much, more.
Happenings
So many great things have been happening at Turnbull Creek this sum-mer. Clarkton’s Pack 512 Cub Scouts came to visit one Saturday in June to learn about tree identification and animal furs and skulls. TCESF staff made birdhouses and placed them in the forest (more about that on page 3). Improvements have been made to the Turnbull Creek Trail and Long Trail. TCESF staff participated in the fantastic week-long Investigating Your Environment teacher workshop at the N.C. Forest Service Mountain Training Facility in Crossnore. Everyone had a blast learning about innovative activities for teaching lessons about our environment! We purchased a new “smart” television which will run a looping presentation about what goes on at the forest and will provide training opportunities for N.C. Forest Service staff. Come on in to the office and check it out!
Welcome Ranger Carrie Harmon!
Ranger Carrie Harmon recently joined TCESF staff as the new Education
Ranger! Be sure to stop by and say hello!
TCESF Newsletter SUMMER 2015
What TCESF can offer YOU! The forest is a wonderful place for fun and exciting learning opportunities. Ranger
Meggs and Ranger Harmon are standing at the ready to guide you and your group
through the forest to learn what a working forest is all about!
We offer a variety of different forest-related educational programs, many that corre-
late with the North Carolina Standards of the Common Core (previously, classes fit
the State Department of Public Instruction’s Curriculum Guide). No group is too large
or too small to provide a class, so call in and schedule yours today! Here at the Forest
we are all about hands-on learning, getting students out of the classroom and into the
environment, and learning about the world around them.
Exhibits and Trails Apart from our scheduled classes, the forest has self-guided exhibits and trails that
can be viewed or walked at any time during normal business hours. Our exhibits in-
clude: Naval Stores, the Fire Protection Exhibit, and the Forest Products Exhibit. They
all have signs or voice boxes that teach you about what each exhibit contains. Our
historical Naval Stores exhibit fits in nicely with the Fourth Grade North Carolina So-
cial Studies Program. It teaches students the significance of tar, pitch, and turpentine
production to our early colonial ancestors. It also teaches about the importance of
longleaf pine to this geographical area.
We also have two scenic trails: the Turnbull Creek Talking Tree Trail (1/4 Mile long)
and the Long Trail, which is an expansive 4.5 miles long! The Talking Tree Trail has
voice boxes that describe different aspects of the forest, and some of the trees have
flip signs on them for identification. See if you can spot all of them! The Long Trail
offers a hike around the majority of Turnbull Creek Educational State Forest. It’s a
good opportunity to spot wildlife, particularly the Red Cockaded Woodpecker, an en-
dangered species!
Listed Environmental Education Center TCESF provides teacher workshops such as Project Learning Tree, among others, in
order to assist teachers in completing some components of the Environmental Educa-
tion Certification Program. We have an upcoming PLT K-8 program in September.
The Outdoor Classroom Programs we offer:
Tree Rings
New Forests for Wildlife
Predators and Their Prey
True Story of Smokey Bear
How Paper Comes from
Trees
Fire Control
Naval Stores
Out of Place
Turnbull Creek Trail
Skins and Skulls
Call ahead to schedule a class.
Classes usually run 30 minutes
in length, but can be adjusted
Authentic Turpentine Still
Huey UH-1B Helicopter in Fire Protection Exhibit
Additional Offerings at
TCESF
Picnic Shelter with
electricity
Picnic Tables
Public Bathroom
facilities
Mountain-to-Sea Trail
North Carolina
Birding Trail
Lottery Permit Youth
Hunting opportunities
for one turkey season
and two deer season
hunts. (through NC
WRC)
Scout Projects
Senior Projects
Want to know more?
Call or email the TCESF
Rangers today!
Two Eastern Bluebird Fledglings huddled together in a new birdhouse
Birds Galore! In an effort to bring more feathered friends to TCESF, we made
about 20 Eastern Bluebird houses and placed them all over the forest!
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology website has a NestWatch program
where citizen scientists can monitor nests and report their findings.
Not all of the houses have had success yet, but this one next to the
Forest Products Exhibit surely has! So far this year, we have had
counts of at least 11 nesting attempts and 34 total eggs in our bird-
houses.
Where do we go from here? We are interested in also putting up a few
Wood Duck boxes, as well as birdhouses for other species of birds
such as the Great Crested Flycatcher, Brown-headed Nuthatch, Pileat-
ed Woodpecker, and Great Horned Owl. Interested in participating in
the NestWatch program yourself ? Log on to nestwatch.org to get
started today!
Red-Cockaded Woodpecker
Upcoming Events
September 1st: Applica-
tion Deadline for Permit
Only Deer Hunts (Oct 8-10
and Oct 22-24)— Apply
through NC WRC
September 24th: Project
Learning Tree K-8
Teacher Workshop:
9a.m. to 4p.m.
Call or email TCESF for
details and to register.
Let’s Go Geocaching! In the next month or so we will be launching a new Geocaching project
here at the forest. Ranger Harmon is an avid Geocacher, and will get to
combine her love of the game with her love of Turnbull Creek Educational
State Forest. “The goal of our new Geocaching project is to make learning
about the forest a fun adventure,” Harmon said. Geocaching is a world-
wide GPS game where players log on to www.geocaching.com and
search for caches in their area. Using the provided GPS coordinates, the
players venture out in search of the cache locations. Caches can be phys-
ical boxes, tubes, or containers of all shapes and sizes, and often have
“geo-swag” inside– collectable items that can be taken (as long as you
replace the items with other items). Some of these items can be tracked
on geocaching.com, and are called “trackables” or “travel bugs” or
“geocoins.” We’ve even found Smokey Bear themed geocoins and will be
placing them in the caches! Each Geocache will highlight different
elements of TCESF, whether it be the ecosystem, Forest Service related
information, the Mountains to Sea Trail, and many others. For more infor-
mation on the game of Geocaching, please visit www.geocaching.com. To
find our Geocaches, search for username “TCESF” or type in our zip code
(28337). **Please respect the rules and regulations of Geocaching, as
well as our forest open season and hours of operation.**
Turnbull Creek Educational State Forest
4803 Sweet Home Church Road
Elizabethtown, NC 28337
PLACE STAMP HERE
Outdoor Education Made Fun!