Thursday, Nov 29, 2007
More than 120 people turned out on Tuesday, November 20th, to celebrate the grand opening of the newly-completed Twin Creeks Science and Education Center. Members of the park’s staff were joined by the park’s primary partners, who played a pivotal role in the center’s completion. Senator Lamar Alexander delivered the keynote address.
The new facility will provide office and work space for approximately 25 park resource management and science staff members engaged in air quality monitoring, vegetation management, and inventory and monitoring of the park’s flora and fauna. It will also provide a climate-controlled, 1,500-square-foot space to house the park’s natural history collection of tens of thousands of preserved plants, animals and insect specimens – including the largest recorded hellbender salamander and a mounted specimen of the extinct passenger pigeon.
The park will also be able to welcome visiting researchers from all over the world who have long been interested in studying the biologically diverse Smolies but have been handicapped by the park’s lack of facilities to accommodate them. Many of these scientists are working on the park’s all taxa biodiversity inventory (ATBI), a survey of all of the estimated 100,000 species in the park. Along with laboratory areas, Twin Creeks provides space where rangers will conduct educational programs for both students and adults, who will be able to interact with the researchers and learn science in a hands-on environment.
"Growing up in the shadow of the Smokies gave me a life-long appreciation of nature and desire to protect our open spaces for years to come,” said Alexander, who grew up just outside the park. “The Science and Education Center we dedicate today will be a milestone for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, because the next generation of visitors will have a new way to learn about the park and the forces that threaten it. Hands-on science will not only instruct students about how to keep our air clean and the importance of preservation, but will hopefully spark a lifetime of interest in science, conservation and the Great American Outdoors."
Superintendent Dale Ditmanson, who served as host and master of ceremonies, said that the new 15,000-square-foot center is the first major new facility to be constructed in the Smokies since the 1960s, when the Sugarlands Visitor Center was opened. He paid special recognition to the park’s partners – the Great Smoky Mountains Association and the Friends of the Smokies – for helping make the center a reality.
“In 2001 the Smokies received a $3.9 million federal appropriation to construct the new facility,” said Ditmanson. “But by the time design was finished and bids were received, construction costs had escalated significantly, leaving us with a $600,000 shortfall. In addition to the contract cost shortfall, we had no funding left to run water and sewer lines from the center to connect with Gatlinburg municipal utilities.”
“In order to keep the project on-track,” said Ditmanson, “I went to the boards of the Friends of the Smokies and the Great Smoky Mountains Association and asked for their assistance. Both groups immediately assured me that we could count on them to donate the over $300,000 so that the contract could be awarded. I also approached the Gatlinburg city commission and they voted unanimously to have city crews run the needed utilities 1.5 miles up to the site and accept reimbursement later.”
“We are proud and pleased that we were able to play a role in this and many other important park scientific and educational programs, including Parks As Classrooms, which will bring thousands young people to this new center,” said Mark Williams, chairman of the Friends of the Smokies. “Since our creation in 1993, we have raised over $21 million to support the Smokies.”
Williams also recognized Wilma Maples of Gatlinburg for her support of the park and Twin Creeks project in particular. Maples owns the historic Gatlinburg Burg Inn, but was also the secretary to the park’s first superintendent, “Colonel” Ross Eakin.
Great Smoky Mountains Association chairman Dan Lawson offered this: “As chair, I am proud to say that the association board agreed unanimously to provide the needed funding. We are not primarily a fundraising group, but an educational one, but it’s a bonus that our publication and sales of books, videos, and other park materials will allow us to provide $1.7 million in aid to the Smokies this year.”
“The Smokies is exceedingly fortunate,” said Francis Peltier, SERO associate regional director. “Many national parks now have partners, but very few are as completely integrated into their park’s operations, and in very few cases do they get along nearly so amicably with both the park and one another.”
Dr. Earnest Bernard, the chair of Discover Life in America, which is coordinating the ATBI, closed the ceremony by presenting Senator Alexander with a color photo of an insect that was first discovered in the Smokies. He said the new species was named Cosberella lamaralexanderi or the “Alexander springtail” in appreciation of the senator’s support for research funding in parks and because its checkerboard coloration bore some resemblance to a trademark checker shirt that he wore while campaigning for governor of Tennessee.
The senator expressed his gratitude and remarked, “It is a pretty cute bug!”
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