2005 – Issue 2 (April)
Asa Gray: Legendary Botanist and Pioneering Appalachian Naturalist
I have a field guide addiction. Upwards of a hundred of the gems adorn my shelves, although none are more impressive than my massive Gray’s Manual of Botany (1848). Great advances in botany have rendered it somewhat antiquated, but it is nonetheless a masterpiece and testament to a great thinker. With the arrival of spring…
Read MoreA Second Chance
For nearly fifty years, one of North America’s most magnificent bird species was thought to be extinct. But just a week before the printing of this paper, scientists confirmed that at least one ivory-billed woodpecker – and they suspect at least a few more – is alive and well in Arkansas. Tim Gallagher from the…
Read MoreNew Life for Appalachian Homebuilding Tradition
images/voice_uploads/PoplarCircle.gif The passion in Chris McCurry’s voice can bring tears to your eyes. And she’s not talking about solving world peace or finding cures for childhood diseases. Chris is talking about using poplar bark as siding for homes and businesses. “The importance of this really hits a chord with me,” she says. “Bark siding is…
Read MoreSupporting Their Farming “Habit”
“Know how to make a small fortune farming?” “Start out with a large fortune and pretty soon you’ll have a small one.” This sort of wry humor is standard among farmers when talking about their declining profession. It’s no secret that the family farm is in financial trouble – the nation’s small farms have been…
Read MoreLooking Out for Our Feathered Friends
images/voice_uploads/BirdCircle.gif They come here with names as rich as the velvety colors of their wings—scarlet tanager, rose-breasted grosbeak, belted kingfisher, golden-winged warbler, and yellow-bellied sapsucker. The year-round residents, the seasonal migrants, the sparsely spotted interlopers that have been driven here by odd weather and confusion make up a diverse and beautiful range of color and…
Read MoreBest Birding Spots in the Southern Appalachians
Brasstown Bald, Georgia: Species sighted here include Canada warbler, black-throated blue warbler, rose-breasted grosbeak, blackburnian warbler, scarlet tanager, and blue-headed vireo, ravens, and winter wrens. Mount Mitchell, North Carolina: There has been massive and visible die-off of Fraser Fir here, making the mountaintop home to birds that prefer shrubs and thickets like the hermit thrush,…
Read MoreRemoving Barriers to Healthier Rivers
images/voice_uploads/DamCircle.gif As the splendor of another Appalachian spring unfolds, birds are not the only migrants returning to the mountains where they were born. Shad, a native fish once abundant in the mid Atlantic states, are moving up through the estuaries of the Chesapeake Bay on their way back to their natal rivers. Adult male and…
Read MoreAppalachian Voice Members: Hear Them Roar!
This spring, Appalachian Voices’ staff, members and volunteers worked together to achieve an enormous success for clean air in North Carolina and across the Southeast. As a result of those efforts, North Carolina is taking bipartisan strides to help keep big industrial polluters from weakening federal clean air standards and further dirtying our air in…
Read MoreAppalachian Treasures Project Touring Nation to Protect Coalfield Communities
On a recent March morning, a group of community and business leaders from Ashtabula, Ohio sat riveted and astonished as they listened to the stories of three visitors from Appalachia. They learned about how the peaceful lives of the two elderly women, members of coal mining families and life-long residents of the mountains of southern…
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