Participation Type
Paper
Presentation #1 Title
Sustaining Forests: Lessons from the Blue Ridge
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
In the 1970s-90s a series of disputes erupted over management of the Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests, which include over a million acres within the southern Appalachian region. The region, including this Southern Blue Ridge section, hosts biodiversity remarkable among the world’s temperate forests. These natural riches have received recognition from both the U.S. government and the United Nations. The forests also play crucial roles in local human communities. For millennia human inhabitants have relied on the woods for livelihoods, enjoyed them in recreation, and celebrated them in art. Questions of their management, therefore, have carried and continue to carry real urgency.
The 1976 National Forest Management Act (NFMA), itself a product of Appalachian activism and southern mountain forest management disputes, required the US Forest Service to seriously consider public input in its management decision-making process. In post-NFMA battles over the Nantahala and Pisgah, competing knowledge claims emerged as central. US Forest Service officials, hunters, timber industry personnel, ecologists, loggers, trained foresters, and others familiar with the woods made such claims, each of which had important implications for forest management. Some, such as hunters and loggers, usually based their claims on knowledge gained through experience working the woods. Others, such as foresters and ecologists, usually based knowledge claims on specialized training. But there was no neat opposition of “local” (as shorthand for experiential) and “expert” (as shorthand for formally educated in the sciences) knowledge. Rather, loggers, hunters, foresters, and even ecologists sometimes divided, landing on different sides of the same forest management issue and frequently troubling any neat divide between “locals” and “experts.”
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Kathryn Newfont is with the University of Kentucky history department and Appalachian Studies program. Her first book, Blue Ridge Commons: Environmental Activism and Forest History in Western North Carolina, looked at wilderness, petroleum, and clearcut timber harvesting on the Nantahala and Pisgah National Forests in the 1970s-1980s. It won the 2012 Weatherford Award for Non-fiction from the Appalachian Studies Association and the 2012 Thomas Wolfe Literary Award. Her current project is a case study of commons forest defense in western North Carolina’s mid-1990s “Don’t Cut Bluff” campaign. She currently serves as president of the Appalachian Studies Association.
Sustaining Forests: Lessons from the Blue Ridge
In the 1970s-90s a series of disputes erupted over management of the Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests, which include over a million acres within the southern Appalachian region. The region, including this Southern Blue Ridge section, hosts biodiversity remarkable among the world’s temperate forests. These natural riches have received recognition from both the U.S. government and the United Nations. The forests also play crucial roles in local human communities. For millennia human inhabitants have relied on the woods for livelihoods, enjoyed them in recreation, and celebrated them in art. Questions of their management, therefore, have carried and continue to carry real urgency.
The 1976 National Forest Management Act (NFMA), itself a product of Appalachian activism and southern mountain forest management disputes, required the US Forest Service to seriously consider public input in its management decision-making process. In post-NFMA battles over the Nantahala and Pisgah, competing knowledge claims emerged as central. US Forest Service officials, hunters, timber industry personnel, ecologists, loggers, trained foresters, and others familiar with the woods made such claims, each of which had important implications for forest management. Some, such as hunters and loggers, usually based their claims on knowledge gained through experience working the woods. Others, such as foresters and ecologists, usually based knowledge claims on specialized training. But there was no neat opposition of “local” (as shorthand for experiential) and “expert” (as shorthand for formally educated in the sciences) knowledge. Rather, loggers, hunters, foresters, and even ecologists sometimes divided, landing on different sides of the same forest management issue and frequently troubling any neat divide between “locals” and “experts.”
