Issue 2: September 2003

Editorials and Letters

Forests On May 20, the House of Representatives passed the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, and on July 24, the Senate Agriculture Committee passed a similar bill. The purported aim of this legislation is to reduce the risk of wildfire damage…

Chattanooga Comes Back Strong and Green

Whether called Chat-to-to-noog-gee by the Chickamauga, reportedly meaning ‘mountain rising to a point’, or later Ross’s Landing, by 1969 the Environmental Protection Agency named Chattanooga something else; “the dirtiest city in America.” How dirty had the East Tennessee metro…

Wild Jefferson

Jefferson National Forest contains 58,000 acres of wilderness areas. The Draft Management Plan recommends another 28,000 acres for wilderness study. The Radford Coalition is an ad-hoc organization made up of representatives from the Virginia Wilderness Committee, Appalachian Trail Club, Southern…

Dorothy; Not in Kansas Anymore

Longtime coal miner Bernard Gibson can see what’s there and see what coming. “It’s going,” Gibson said. “I can’t predict when and you can’t either. But it’s got to go.” ‘It’ is the fractured point on the southern face of…

Landowners Head for the Woods

Virginia landowners will have an opportunity this fall to observe first hand possible alternatives for their forest and for the critters that depend upon it. Experts in managing forests for the future will be featured at Virginia Forest Watch’s (VAFW)…

Best Management

The face of Southern Appalachia is rapidly changing. It’s valleys and mountaintops are beginning to show their age at the hands of new development and mismanaged forestlands. A growing environmental awareness among residents of the region has provided fertile…

Women Paddlers Take On Appalachian Whitewater

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Va. – Milia Boiroyevich learned how to canoe with her family on the Danube river in her native Russia. Today she spends many of her Wednesdays plying the rivers and streams of Southwest Virginia with a group of…

Passing on the Patriot Island

Kayford Crack-Up

By Harvard Ayers Blaine Meador’s wife has heard Kayford Mountain talk, and she doesn’t like what it’s saying. Looming above Dorothy, West Virginia, a giant crack has opened out of coal-mined Kayford Mountain that she and everyone else in town…

Last Chance Landscape

When something as lovely as the Blue Ridge Parkway passes through one’s own backyard, it’s easy to take it for granted—the peaceful, curling road, the superb mountain vistas, and the economic rewards of Parkway related tourism. But residents of the…

Shell Shocked:

Picking raspberries for breakfast on a moist morning early this summer, I came within a hair of stepping on an elderly male box turtle I first encountered on my homestead in 1995. I call him MG 75 because that‚s…

Dateline Appalachia

DatelineAppalachia New Documentary Showcases Region Over one trillion dollars; 1,000,000,000,000,000. That would represent one estimate totalling the value of the natural resources extracted out of Appalachia since the industrial age chugged up the mountains. This funnelling of the area’s riches…

Good Deal

Local and regional land trusts all over the country struggle to cover their operating costs, which can be considerable, given the price of legal expenses and the price of land these days. Foundation grants are the traditional major source of…