Conestee Nature Preserve

After facing adversity early this month from Helene, we are so impressed by the resilience of our Education Team. With help from incredible volunteers and our Trails Team, we are able to host field trips in the Preserve again!

A special thank you to the Jack Stone Memorial Fund for supporting field trips this month and through the school year. 👏

We're bringing back this popular program for a third year in a row!

In recognition of Native American Heritage Month, we welcome Joy, Grandmother Spirithawk, to the Preserve to share stories and traditions from her Cherokee culture, as it relates to Conestee Nature Preserve! Join us to learn more about the history of this land and the people who called it home first.

You can purchase tickets for 1 of the 2 time slots here --> https://bit.ly/CherokeeCNP24

Inspired by the Japanese practice of Shinrin Yoku, "Nature Therapy" encourages us to slow down from our usual hectic pace and gently focus on the natural miracles all around us.

Sign up here --> https://bit.ly/CNPtherapy

For this program, we'll engage our senses on a relaxing and mindful walk, to encounter the nature around us in a different way than we do typically. We'll be led by Marie McIntyre, a certified Association of Nature and Forest Therapy guide. Sign up today to save your spot and to form a deeper connection with nature and yourself!

✨“When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are, anything your heart desires, will come to you." ✨

Your wish is our command, so we're back with one of our most popular programs - an evening under the stars at Conestee Nature Preserve, with !

🦉Your visit begins with a Night Hike, led by CNP's education team, followed by an Astronomy Adventure, led by Roper Mountain staff. They'll bring their portable planetarium, and telescopes, so we can get a closer look at the Moon, the rings of Saturn, and more!🔭

Get your tickets before they sell out! --> https://bit.ly/CNPstars

One of the fun things about working at a Nature Preserve, is that even tidying up can result in fun finds! Today, we discovered this adorable Three-lined salamander enjoying a patch of moss behind our office! 🦎

Three-lined salamanders are native to our region, averaging around 5” in length. If you live near water, theres a chance you might find one hiding underneath woody debris, as they are quite common. Common, but cute! 💚

HUGE thank you to Upstate Greenways and Trails Alliance for spending two days making tremendous progress cleaning up our mountain bike trail!

Helene brought down upwards of 1,000 trees in this area, so we certainly have our work cut out for us before we can reopen the MTB trail. With generous help from UGATA, we are one step closer. 👏

🍻 We're very excited that we were able to re-schedule our Hops and Herons beer festival after Helene. For the event, including set-up and breakdown, the parking lot at 601 Fork Shoals Rd, as well as Henderson Meadow, are closed, except to ticket holders to the event. 👍

*IF you have tickets and are just now learning about this, you may need to check your spam folder for the email communications regarding Hops and Herons over the past couple of weeks.*

Thank you SO MUCH to for supporting our Helene recovery efforts at their fundraiser at ! We are beyond grateful for this incredible community of supporters. 💚

Pictured is our Interim Executive Director, Erin Knight, with Upstate SORBA Treasurer & CNP Board Member, Scott Trenor.

Brisk October mornings 🤝 new CNP sweatshirts!

Visit us at our gift shop or shop online (www.conesteepreserve.org/shop) to get yours!

Turns out the calendar doesn't stop for us, even in the face of natural disasters and trail repairs. Maybe that's a good thing, though, because we've been VERY excited about our upcoming event - A Conestee Halloween! 🎃

You and your little ones will first venture down the Trick-or-Treat trail, stopping at numerous stations to collect candy AND maybe learn a little about the creatures that go bump in the night at the Preserve. 🕸🦇🐍 Your trick-or-treating jaunt ends in our Meadow, where we'll have showings of "Toy Story of Terror" on a massive projector screen, while you enjoy freshly popped popcorn and Halloween games. 🕶

Space is limited, so pick up your tickets ASAP --> https://bit.ly/CNPhalloween24. Tickets are timed entry to space out the trick-or-treaters, but you're welcome to stay til' the end, regardless!

We’re honored to receive this funding to apply towards our strategic planning of the next 3-5 years!

The Community Foundation of Greenville is excited to announce the recipients of our 2024 Capacity Building Grants! Congratulations to these twenty local nonprofits that received grants totaling $150,000.

These grants help with various capacity building projects from technology upgrades to strategic planning efforts. We are proud to support these important efforts to improve an organization’s ability to serve the community and create impact. CFG allocates funds for these grants based on income generated by the Foundation’s unrestricted endowment and donor contributions.

https://www.cfgreenville.org/about/news/2024-capacity-building-grants-announced/

Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Upstate Bike Walk Greenville Cancer Survivors Park Canterbury Counseling Center Carolina Ballet Theatre Conestee Nature Preserve GirlUp GVL Greenville Area Parkinson Society Greenville County Youth Orchestras Greenville Literacy Association International Ballet Greenville Loaves and Fishes Greenville Miracle Hill Ministries Momentum Bike Clubs NAMI Greenville Pendleton Place Inc. Taylors Free Medical Clinic The Warehouse Theatre Upstate Warrior Solution YouthBASE

After 2 long weeks, we're ready for the first phase of re-opening. We appreciate the patience, concern and understanding that you've all had during this time. With the help of this community, donating your time and money, we've made great progress to this point.

While we're beyond happy to invite visitors back to some of our trails, it is critically important that when you visit, you respect the remaining trail closures. Two of our major boardwalks, along with a few additional trails, experienced catastrophic damage. They will remain closed indefinitely. Those boardwalks are Woodie Walk and the West Bay boardwalk. Moving forward, the re-construction of these vital connections will hinge on funding, which we will be actively seeking.

To get a glimpse of the destruction we've overcome and what we'll continuet to face, take a look at this slideshow --> https://youtu.be/WGbv9lsFZ0A?si=YhyiYNs37JcZC5s3

Things have been bleak and busy, so here’s a meditative green tree frog that shares our office, to brighten your day. 💚

With help from over 100 volunteers, we are one step closer to being able to reopen the Preserve to the public! 👏

On Friday, our volunteers helped in numerous ways. From clearing the paved trails of debris and sediment to putting fencing around our most damaged areas that will remain closed while we attempt to rebuild infrastructure we’ve lost, volunteers truly made an impact.

With support from every age group, we’re overflowing with gratitude for our amazing community of supporters!

Stay tuned for future volunteer events in the coming weeks.

We’re grateful for all of the community support we’re receiving. It will be a long recovery, but we’ll get through it together.

The Preserve isn’t the only place hurting right now. Please consider supporting other local nonprofits who are providing aid to those most in need in the Upstate during this difficult time such as:

.village

Feel free to recognize any other local nonprofits we may have missed. ↴

Thank you all for your eagerness to help us clean-up the Preserve! Your love for CNP is overwhelming and so reassuring. We're sorry if we've been unable to respond to every comment and email offering help, but we see you and appreciate you! 🥹

We've made progress on removing some of the more dangerous fallen and leaning trees. With that, we're ready to hold a larger Volunteer cleanup day, including family-friendly opportunities, this Friday, and we hope that many of you can join us.

Please sign up here --> https://dash.pointapp.org/admin/events/212998 (you will need to create a POINT account if you haven't yet). If this opportunity fills up, we hope to hold more in the coming weeks.

Again, thank you all, for your support! It means the world to our staff to know that our community values the Preserve as much as we do. 💚

Catastrophic… that’s the only way to describe what happened at Conestee Nature Preserve and across our region last week.

But, we’ve started to make headway on the devastation along our trails. With a HUGE helping hand from Matt at , we’re making progress on cutting away giant trees. Thank you, Matt and team!

If you’d like to help with cleanup, sign up to be a volunteer here to receive info —> https://pointapp.org/orgs/3764

Please visit www.conesteepreserve.org/give for Helene Relief today and help us get Conestee Nature Preserve open once again! We'll continue to update you as we learn more.

We appreciate your patience as ALL trails in the Preserve are closed until further notice. Stay safe!

We’re incredibly grateful for our fantastic team of volunteers. We wouldn’t achieve nearly as much without their support!

This month, we’d like to recognize Vidya. A fixture at volunteer work days, she is one of our most reliable and dedicated volunteers. Vidya’s passion for volunteering is matched with an unending interest in the Preserve and its diverse flora and fauna. Thank you for all that you do for CNP, Vidya!

Peek-a-boo! I sssssssseeee you! 👀🐍

Today, 2nd graders from Rudolph Gordon participated in our “A River Runs Through Greenville” field trip program!

🌀During this field trip students learn about how water can change a landscape and some of the ways that erosion can be prevented. As you can seen in this pic, students get hands-on with our stream table to see how rivers change over time and how powerful they can be when breaking through mountains and other landforms. Lastly, students become little engineers and work together to design a way to keep litter from getting into our waterways along with all the water and dirt during rain events.

🌀Hands-on learning like this is offered, for FREE, to these Upstate students, thanks to a generous, monthly sponsorship from !