Pisgah River Rangers

10/14/2026

With more salamander biodiversity than anywhere else on Earth, the Southern Appalachian mountains are home to 77 out of the 550 different species found worldwide! These amazing amphibians are commonly found under fallen logs, river rocks, or buried in leaf litter. Salamanders are delicate, and it’s best not to handle them if you’re not wearing gloves. Oils from our skin, or residue from lotion, sunscreen, and bug spray can harm salamanders. Since they absorb oxygen through their skin, it’s extra important to use caution and respect when interacting with the mellow ‘mander! Have you found any salamanders in Pisgah?

Salamanders in order of appearance: dusky salamander, Southern gray-cheeked salamander, Blue Ridge two-lined salamander, spring salamander.

10/08/2026

Last week we enjoyed a beautiful Wednesday on the water at Pisgah’s Veterans Fish Day 🎣 Our friends from the Western NC Veterans Affairs joined us to catch catfish, eat great BBQ, and enjoy the outdoors. A huge thank you to the WNC Muskie Club and USFS Pisgah District staff for making this event happen and to the NC Wildlife Resources Commission for hosting us. We are very grateful to honor the veterans in our community for their service!

10/06/2026

As the air begins to chill and the leaves start to change color, we’re reflecting on our 8th amazing summer season of Pisgah River Rangers. This 2026 season we were so fortunate to work closely with our partners to provide educational programming, steward our rivers and streams in the Pisgah, and assist with biological monitoring. Our work would not be possible without this season’s bright and passionate young conservation professionals. Thank you so much to Emma, Pen, Tori, and Logan for their hard work this summer. We miss them here on the District and know they will go far in this field!

09/29/2026

Sycamore Flats Picnic Area is closed for for a major infrastructure improvement project and it will remain closed for the season.
For safety purposes, the public should avoid this area, as heavy equipment will be active during construction. Please check the Pisgah Ranger District Visitors Center or the U.S. Forest Service - National Forests in North Carolina page for updates.

09/27/2026

This season, each of our River Ranger interns worked to create an educational deliverable for our program. Pen did a great job creating a timeline poster of Living Legends of Pisgah!

The land, flora, and fauna that makes up our national forest has been around for a long time; some more than others! A few of the forest’s most iconic residents even survived the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs, like the beloved hellbender salamander. Over hundreds of millions of years, the area that we now call Pisgah has been shaped and changed into the forest we know and love today.

09/22/2026

Team work makes this dream work for this 💪 earlier this summer Pisgah River Rangers joined forces with Ivanna Knox and Pisgah Trout Unlimited to put in a fence at Thrift Cove. The fence prevents foot traffic from eroding the banks of this newly restored stream. This project would not have been possible without USFS Pisgah District staff and TPC’s trails crew— truly all hands on deck for this one! We’ve enjoyed watching this site quite literally blossom with native plants, providing a cool clear stream flow and lots of habitat for animals 🌼

09/20/2026

Our crew had a hellbender of a time at the second annual NC Hellbender Festival in Spruce Pine! We joined our Pisgah District Biologist and USFS staff from the Appalachian Ranger District to table and educate festival goers about the Pisgah National Forest and all things river critters.

The best part? Seeing visitors get excited about hellbenders of course! We had a fun day of helping folks block print their custom hellbender, crawdad and stonefly tote bags 🦞

Thank you to the town of Spruce Pine for hosting such a wonderful event celebrating these amazing creatures!

09/18/2026

The Sycamore Flats Recreation Area on the Pisgah National Forest will close starting Monday, September 21, for the remainder of the season for a major infrastructure improvement project. For safety purposes, the public should avoid this area, as heavy equipment will be active during construction.

We apologize for the inconvenience and look forward to welcoming you back when the project is finished next spring! If you have any questions or need assistance finding other picnic areas, please contact the Pisgah Visitor Center at (828) 866-3437.

09/18/2026

One Visitor’s trash is a River Ranger’s treasure! Removing 1,875 pounds of trash from the forest this summer certainly wasn’t all bad— these are some of the keepers the River Rangers took home with them this season 😆 you call it litter pickup, we call it a scavenger hunt!

09/15/2026