tretching more than 1,000 miles, the Southern Appalachians host one of the richest ecosystems on our planet. These mountains have supported life for more than 300 million years, since flowering plants first appeared on Earth. Rivers overflow with more aquatic species than anywhere in the world and supply clean water to more than 10 million people. Neo-tropical songbirds summer in giant old-growth trees. Healthy black bear and river otter populations still thrive. Spectacular gorges, soaring peaks, and mysterious coves host world-class backcountry recreation.

But this rich vision of Southern Appalachian forests is a mere fraction of what existed before three centuries of European settlement dramatically changed the region. Untold numbers of wildlife species went extinct. Millions of acres of dense woodland and pristine watersheds succumbed to unregulated logging. Rivers were scoured and clogged with silt - parts of some rivers erased from the map altogether. Native American cultures became diminished and some disappeared entirely. Modern development claimed the landscape.

In the early Twentieth Century, conservationists proposed a system of public forest reserves allowing for various uses and limited extraction of resources, and several eastern National Forests and National Parks were established.

The Southern Appalachian National Forests - the George Washington, Jefferson, Pisgah, Nantahala, Cherokee, Chattahoochee, Sumter, Talladega and Bankhead - now total 4.7 million acres. The Great Smoky Mountains and Shenandoah National Parks protect an additional 720,000 acres. Together, these Parks and Forests comprise the greatest concentration of federally owned land in the eastern United States.

While the National Park Service mandate is resource protection and visitor enjoyment, the U.S. Forest Service is charged with managing its land for multiple uses, including watershed protection, limited logging, fish and wildlife habitat, and recreation. But by the 1960s, the Forest Service's main activities were building roads and preparing timber sales for private industry. By the mid-1980s, clearcutting had become widespread in the Southern Appalachians.

Today, Southern Appalachian National Forests have become islands amidst a sea of highways and encroaching developments. Increased pressure to build roads, dam rivers, log forests, and mine mountains still threatens our remaining wild lands, as do widespread urban sprawl and air pollution.

Most Southern Appalachian Wilderness areas on our National Forests are small, averaging less than 10,000 acres; nationwide the National Forest average is almost 87,000 acres. Moreover, because of their popularity, many eastern Wilderness areas are overused - as, for example, the Ellicott Rock Wilderness in South Carolina, the Cheaha in Alabama, Citico Creek in Tennessee, Lewis Fork in Virginia, Joyce Kilmer- Slickrock in North Carolina, and the Cohutta in Georgia. In the Cohutta, visitor use more than doubles that of any other Wilderness in the southern National Forests.

As more areas are logged, as wildlife habitats and watersheds shrink, as recreational demand increases, permanently protecting more land as Wilderness is crucial.

Wilderness: The Highest Level of Protection
nacted in 1964, the Wilderness Act created the National Wilderness Preservation System, and defined protected Wilderness as follows:

A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.

The Act enabled Congress to designate "Wilderness" areas in National Forests, National Parks, and other federal lands to be kept permanently undeveloped. Wilderness areas are protected from timber-cutting, roads, dams, and, since 1984, from new mining claims and mineral leasing. In short, Wilderness designation allows the forest to follow its own natural processes. Other protected lands - such as "backcountry recreation" areas - restrict logging and road-building on a limited basis, but only designated Wilderness protects the forest forever.

The Wilderness Act - which established 9.1 million acres of Wilderness in 1964 - directed the Forest Service, the Park Service, and the Fish andWildlife Service to survey lands for possible additional Wilderness designation. (The Bureau of Land Management subsequently was directed to survey its lands in 1976.) It is the responsibility of Congress to decide which areas to protect. Since passage of the Act in 1964, Congress has protected a total of 106 million acres across the country. The Southern Appalachians contain forty-three Wilderness areas totaling 473,000 acres. All of these are National Forest areas, except for the 81,000-acreWilderness within Shenandoah National Park. Wilderness areas comprise eight percent of the total National Forest land and about one percent of all the land in the region.

In 1975, the Eastern Wilderness Areas Act allowed "regenerating" lands - lands growing back to a wild state - to be candidates for Wilderness designation. The Act designated 15Wilderness areas in thirteen eastern states and required Wilderness studies for 17 additional areas. Today, hunting, fishing, hiking, camping, canoeing, kayaking, and climbing are popular activities in these beautiful protected places.

The Human Value of Wilderness
outhern Appalachian Wilderness areas improve our quality of life. They grant us solitude, spiritual renewal, and escape from the noise, pollution, and frantic pace of urban life. They protect watersheds and improve air quality by acting as a filter for pollutants. They grow plants that contain the essential ingredients for many modern medicines. They offer spectacular beauty and world-class recreation; in fact, the Southern Appalachian National Forests host more than 50 million visitors each year - a number expected to increase dramatically in the next decades.

Wilderness and Wildlife Survival
ilderness areas are key components in efforts to protect large blocks of undisturbed forest habitat critical to the survival of many species. Wilderness can act as a refuge for species that are primary indicators of the overall health of the ecosystem.

For example, even though Wilderness areas in the Southern Appalachians are mostly small and isolated from each other and cannot by themselves sustain viable populations of black bear, they are nevertheless a critical source of habitat for this important indicator species in many areas in the Southern Appalachians. Although black bear often inhabit non-Wilderness habitats, Wilderness affords the greatest protection from the primary contributors to black bear mortality and population decline. In short, Wilderness areas permanently provide core interior habitat unavailable elsewhere.

These are Your Wild Lands - Please Help to Protect Them
urrently, there remain a significant number of high-quality candidates for Wilderness designation that should be protected for their core habitat values. These areas include pristine watersheds, critical wildlife habitats, and old-growth forests that can provide a Wilderness-based foundation for ecosystem health and restoration across the Southern Appalachian landscape.

Bottom line: these wild lands are yours to protect - and their fate may be decided in the very near future.

Your voice and your actions can make a huge difference - and there are several easy ways for anyone to get involved. Please consider joining The Wilderness Society or a similar organization in your area dedicated to wild lands conservation.