One hundred years after Katherine Lee Bates first put her poem “America the Beautiful” to music, the beauty of our nation’s landscape remains a source of artistic inspiration and national pride. We can be thankful that visionary leaders such as…
Blog Archives
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Elkins, West Virginia
Make two lists: one of the top outdoor recreation destinations in Appalachia and a second of the natural wonders surrounding the town of Elkins, West Virginia, and you’ll notice the two lists have a lot in common. Within an short…
Another Big Roll-Back in Pollution Rules
Recently, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed to weaken rules regulating both deadly fine particulate matter and toxic mercury air pollution. Knowing that these rules are strongly opposed by the nation’s public health and environmental advocates, the Bush Administration is…
The Real Cold Mountain Beckons Near Asheville
images/voice_uploads/p2coldmountain.gif By Nan Chase At the beginning of December last year, a few weeks before the public release of the film Cold Mountain, I was invited to a Miramax-sponsored press screening in Asheville, N.C. I expected glamor, glitz, klieg lights…
Conservation Easements that Work
Just as biologists count the number of fish in a body of water to gauge how clean the water is, a rural community can count its barns to understand how well it is preserving the integrity of its landscape. If…
Appalachian Innovation at Work
images/voice_uploads/p2basket.gif Sometimes, creating industry means crafting a work of art. In 1993, community leaders in Asheville, North Carolina were planning a revitalization of the Asheville area. Thinking outside of traditional economic protocols, they realized their community’s strength lay not in…
Bloodroot
One of the first (and fleeting) wildflowers of spring is Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis). In the southern Appalachians, Bloodroot typically blooms from mid-March through April, and is usually found in the loamy soils of deciduous coves and well-drained bottomlands. Desperate to…
Western Ocean Climate in the Eastern Mountains?
A major characteristic of southern Appalachian weather is the large amount of precipitation we receive. Certain locations record the second highest annual rainfall in North America (after the Pacific Northwest), and even fit the definition of a temperate rainforest. Rain…
Appalachian Land Trusts
There are a number of land trusts throughout the Southeast. Many promote the use of easements to protect natural resources and ensure their sustained use over time. Below are four land trusts in the Southern Appalachians that have experience with…
Ruling Will Allow Destruction of Zeb Mountain to Continue
In the last issue of the Appalachian Voice, we brought you a story about the struggle of people in the Elk Valley region of eastern Tennessee to protect their streams, mountains and communities from a new type of mountaintop removal…
