July 7th, 2026 | Linville, N.C. — “We’ve been deploying lots and lots and lots of crews across western North Carolina,” Birckhead said, “to repair trails, clear hazard, clear downed trees and materials that could make areas hard to access or create risk for wildfires, restoring campgrounds, dealing with invasive species — all the stuff it’s going to take to get our public land back open in western North Carolina.”