Taproot Guru

08/26/2026

Today, our hearts are with all the Dolly Parton Family.
Our condolences extend far beyond her family by blood; To her Dollywood Family and the Dollywood Foundation, the people who worked beside her and helped bring her visions to life. To her Herschend family, the Nashville Community and the many musicians, artists, friends and those around the world who shared her extraordinary journey; Today we grieve with you.
Dolly will ALWAYS be Sevier County’s hometown girl and favorite daughter!
At American Eagle Foundation, we were incredibly fortunate to be part of the extended Dollywood Family. We will always be grateful for her love and support.
Dolly's influence went far beyond music and entertainment. She built communities, created opportunities, championed education, supported conservation, and touched lives with a generosity that became one of the hallmarks of her own life.
Her legacy will live on in the people she inspired, the places she helped build, and the millions of lives she touched.
Dolly. You will be deeply missed. WE WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU…

08/25/2026

Doggos always making things better! 🐾

08/25/2026

SOOOOOOOOO many reasons to miss this generous soul!

Oh, Dolly. We’ll miss you so, so much.

We probably don’t have to tell any of you about the impact that Dolly Parton had on humanity. You all probably know about the Imagination Library, and about her contributions to children’s healthcare, and about her charities that made East Tennessee go from being one of the most destitute regions of the U.S. to a thriving, educated community, even in the wake of wildfires and other natural disasters.

But what does this have to do with wildlife rescue? A lot, actually. One of our most successful wildlife rehabilitation and education programs, the American Eagle Foundation, is headquartered at Dollywood and largely funded by her generosity. AEF began rescuing eagles and other birds of prey when they were significantly endangered in 1990, and they had a hand in bringing these birds back from the brink. To this day, visitors to Pigeon Forge get to see our native Tennessean raptors up close and learn to appreciate and protect them.

In 2021, I visited Dollywood and noticed that the Daredevil Falls attraction in particular was covered in nandina, a highly invasive plant that is toxic to native birds. I sent an email about the landscaping, expecting it to be ignored, but got a response from the groundskeeper saying that conservation is an important part of their values as a company, and that they intended to replace their landscaping with more native plants. To my surprise, when I returned the next year, the nandina was gone and there were native plants sprawling across the property, feeding birds and butterflies. I’d never expect a theme park to actually care like that, but their values as a company were evidently more than just platitudes.

Please take a moment to remember Dolly by contributing to the Dollywood Foundation, The American Eagle Foundation, or the charity of your choice today. May we all aspire to leave just a fraction of the impact on the world that this one much-loved person made.

08/25/2026

Five plants growing in your lawn right now are quietly feeding the wildlife you're trying to attract.

White clover pulls nitrogen out of the air and into your soil, and her flowers feed bumblebees and dozens of native bee species.

Violets are the only plant fritillary butterflies can raise their young on. She lays her eggs on nothing else.

Plantain, the flat rosette in the sidewalk cracks, is the host plant for buckeye caterpillars, edible for you, and tougher than anything you planted on purpose.

Self-heal, the low purple flower in the lawn, feeds bees all season and stays short enough to survive the mower.

🌿 And goldenrod, those tall yellow fall plumes, feeds migrating monarchs and native bees. She does not cause your allergies. Ragweed does, and just happens to bloom at the same time.

Five plants. Five food chains. All growing without your help 🌱

08/25/2026

LOVE this sooooooo much!!

🚨 Breaking news: 3 mule deer have been confirmed crossing California's first-ever wildlife overpass.

The deer, captured on trail camera in late May, didn't wait for the official ribbon-cutting. The $20 million wildlife overpass in Siskiyou County, designed to reduce the staggering number of deer and elk killed on Route 97, was apparently usable enough. The bridge will officially open in fall.

We reached out to the 3 mule deer for comment but have not yet received a response.

Wildlife collisions cost the US about $8 billion a year in vehicle damage, injuries, and human deaths. A well-placed crossing pays for itself in reduced accidents within a decade.

A study of 89 wildlife crossings across North America, Europe, and Australia found they reduced wildlife mortality by up to 90% in well-designed projects.

Fencing is doing half the work. A crossing without funnel fencing leading animals toward it is dramatically less effective. The California project includes 3 miles of 8-foot fencing along Route 97.

California has about 100 wildlife crossings planned over the next decade. This one is the first. The Liberty Canyon overpass over the 101 in LA (currently the largest in the world by area) is set to open in 2026.

08/25/2026

Glorious land!! Thank you TNC!

08/25/2026

Thank you Buddy!! 🐾

Reporters gathered on a Manhattan street to watch a blind man step
into traffic with a dog most Americans had never seen doing such work.
Buddy led Morris Frank safely across. His one-word telegram back to
her trainer read: “Success.”

Frank had lost vision in one eye at six and the other at sixteen. In
1927, when he was about twenty, his father read him an article about
German shepherds trained in Europe to guide people blinded in the
First World War. Frank wrote to the author, American dog trainer
Dorothy Harrison Eustis, asking whether it was really true—and
promising that if she trained a dog for him, he would help bring the
idea home.

He traveled to Switzerland in April 1928 and spent five weeks learning
to work with a shepherd named Kiss, whom he renamed Buddy. Training
did not turn the dog into a machine or Frank into a passenger. They
learned a shared language of pace, harness, obstacle and trust. When
they returned to the United States that June, the public demonstration
in New York made visible what the pair already knew together: mobility
could be collaborative.

The harder task came after the crossing. Frank and Eustis founded The
Seeing Eye in 1929, then pressed transportation systems, restaurants
and other public places to admit guide dogs. Frank and Buddy traveled
thousands of miles demonstrating not dependence, but a form of
independence created between species. The barrier was not blindness
alone. It was a society organized as though blind people and their
dogs did not belong in its ordinary spaces.

Buddy died in 1938. By then, she and Frank had spent a decade opening
doors that were not designed to open for them. Their story asks us to
reconsider the solitary picture of independence. None of us moves
through the world alone; some forms of support are simply more visible
than others.

In the old photograph, Frank kneels beside Buddy with one hand resting
against her chest. The historic change ahead of them would require
laws, schools, trainers and persistence. But it began with something
quieter: a young man learning to trust another animal with the next
step, and a dog learning where they were going together.