Hugh is Landscape Conservation Planner and joined the southern Appalachian office of The Wilderness Society in November 2011 after a fifteen year run as Conservation Planner for the Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition.

He is the primary author of Return the Great Forest: A Conversation Vision for the Southern Appalachian Region, the result of years of analysis and documentation of the region's conservation values and prioritites.

Hugh has a Bachelor of Arts in Physics from Vanderbilt University, and a Master of Science in Forest Ecology from the University of Tennessee.