“No human being could create the intricate, complex, mysterious artistry of God that you find in the wilderness. Protecting wild spaces is a way of respecting God.” - Manni Akbar, Atlanta Georgia.
Stretching 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.
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.
Southern Appalachian Wilderness Areas 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 decade. Nevertheless, 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 easternWilderness 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, protecting more land as Wilderness and through other means is crucial. The Wilderness Society is working with partners across the South to protect National Forest wildlands as places of solitude, spiritual renewal, and escape from the noise, pollution and frantic pace of urban life. In spite of strong public support for National Forest protection in the region, however, the Forest Service has developed new management plans for the National Forests in Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama that fail to adequately conserve wilderness, wildlife, old growth and water resources. TWS is working with local groups to challenge these damaging plans and to promote congressional wilderness designations for the last best special wild places in the region.
In the George Washington National Forest in Virginia, for example, one crucial candidate for Wilderness designation is the Ramsey’s Draft addition, which encircles the existing Ramsey’s Draft Wilderness area and is nearly twice its size at 12,800 acres. Dozens of trails make this beautiful area an ideal hiking and backpacking location. Hunting and native trout fishing are popular here, too. An 1,800-acre stand of old-growth forest — one of the largest remaining in the northern tier of the Southern Appalachians — includes sugar maple, beech, basswood, and eastern hemlocks aged 300 years and older.
