The Wilderness Society has already been successful in protecting some parts of the Southern Appalachians. With your help we can continue to build on these successes.
The Southern Appalachians are an outdoor paradise. From mountain biking to kayaking to fishing to hiking through wilderness, there is something for everyone.
The Southern Appalachians of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee are home to some of the few remaining great forests in the eastern United States.
Brent Martin (Wilderness Society), Smoky Mountain News
Mar 2, 2011
Excerpts:
When the Weeks Act was passed by Congress 100 years ago, the region’s forests were, for the most part, in a severely cut over, degraded condition. Champion Fiber (later to become Champion Lumber), Ritter, Andrews, and Gennett Lumber companies, along with many others, had clearcut tens of thousands of acres in the Western North Carolina mountains in the early 20th century and left in their collective wake a landscape of silt-filled streams and fire-ravaged hillsides.
Schlesinger's talk will serve as a prologue to the Headwaters Gathering being held at the college March 27-29. The three-day long conference hosted by Warren Wilson, Orion Magazine and The Wilderness Society will focus on how climate change is going to affect the mountain region environmentally as well as socially, economically and culturally, said Margo Flood, executive director of the Environmental Leadership Center at Warren Wilson.
