Celebrate Earth Day All Month Long

Audrey & Frank Peterman are tenacious advocates for breaking the color barrier and making America’s natural treasures accessible to all Americans regardless of race. They will give the keynote address at UNCA’s Spring Greenfest 2018 on March 26.

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With great natural beauty come great advocates.

Many organizations have formed over the years to preserve Western North Carolina’s natural places and unique character. That’s why this year, MountainTrue and more than 20 area conservation and environmental organizations are combining forces to celebrate Earth Day throughout the entire month of April.

We’re calling this collective effort WNC For The Planet, and we’re teaming up with local businesses, universities, community groups and individuals like you for a month of environmental service, educational opportunities, and celebrations in Asheville and across Western North Carolina.

Susan Bean, Community Engagement Manager for MountainTrue, worked with an organizing committee that included leaders from RiverLink, Friends of the Smokies, Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy, Asheville Greenworks and New Belgium Brewing Company. “Once we had the broad strokes of an idea – that Earth Month is a great opportunity for all of us to come together and make the biggest impact possible – things really picked up steam. The enthusiasm from our partners and the wider community has been amazing.”

As part of the effort, WNC for the Planet launched an online community calendar at wncfortheplanet.org with educational and service opportunities for people of all ages and from all walks of life. Come hear Audrey & Frank Peterman speak on March 26 at UNCA about their book, Legacy on the Land: A Black Couple Discovers Our National Inheritance and Tells Why Every American Should Care. Recycle items that might otherwise end up in the landfill at Asheville GreenWorks’ Hard 2 Recycle event, and catch a screening of the documentary Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry put on by the Organic Growers School. Or, learn how to build a bat box, restore native plant and animal habitats, and weatherize your home to fight climate change.

Keller Williams Realty and Movement Mortgage pitched in for a stream clean up last year.

WNC For The Planet also includes a Business & Community Challenge allowing area businesses, civic organizations and community groups to create teams and compete for prizes and bragging rights. Here’s how it works: Each team earns Planet Points according to how much you accomplish at WNC For the Planet events – how much trash you collect, how many trees you plant, etc. – and at the end of the month we rank your team against other teams. The harder your team works, the more points you earn. The more points you earn, the more you’ve helped keep Western North Carolina beautiful.

WNC for the Planet’s Earth Month culminates with a weekend of celebrations, including Earth Day Kids’ Festival with RiverLink on Saturday, April 21st, and MountainTrue’s annual Earth Day Vigil with faith groups on Sunday, April 22nd. Join us for a final Earth Day party to celebrate our hardworking volunteers and environmental advocates at New Belgium Brewing Company.

Want To See For Yourself?

Check out the WNC For the Planet Events Calendar

Series of Expert Panels to Discuss Future of Nantahala & Pisgah National Forests in Sylva, Boone, Brevard and Andrews this March

Media Contact:

Eliza Stokes, MountainTrue Advocacy & Communications Associate
Email: eliza@mountaintrue.org Phone: 828-258-8737 ext. 218

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Sylva, N.C. – Experts representing a diverse group of conservation, recreation and business interests will take part in a series of special panel events on the future of the Nantahala-Pisgah National Forests this March. The panels, which will be held in Sylva, Boone, Brevard, and Andrews, will present visions for a win-win forest management plan that allows all interests to co-exist and thrive in Western North Carolina’s national forests.

The Forest Plan Determines the Future of Our Forests

This year, the U.S. Forest Service will release the first draft of a new forest management plan for Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests. This big-picture plan sets the ground rules for all activities in the forests for the next fifteen years or more: from wildlife management and timber sales on public lands to the hiking, fishing and mountain biking for which our region is famous.

Comprising more than a million acres combined, Nantahala and Pisgah are a central part of our natural and cultural heritage and a driver of our region’s economy. Everyone who loves our forests has an issue they care about that will be impacted by the new forest management plan.

We’re Working Together for a Plan That Benefits Everyone

In the spirit of cooperation, the Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Partnership was formed to gather all forest interest groups into the same room at once: timber, water, wildlife, recreation, wilderness and more. We don’t leave anyone behind, and we believe it’s critical that everyone be willing to support everyone else’s values with the expectation that the support will be reciprocal. For the past five years, the Partnership has come up with a vision and a set of recommendations for a forest plan that supports all forest interests at once. The Forest Service has also received recommendations from other groups participating in the forest plan revision, and now we want to share the best of those ideas with the wider public.

The panel schedules are as follows:

Sylva

March 15 at the Jackson County Public Library, 6-7:30pm

Panelists: Josh Kelly, Public Lands Field Biologist for MountainTrue

Tommy Cabe, Tribal Forest Resource Specialist for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians

Andrea Leslie, Habitat Conservation Coordinator for the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission

Bill Kane, Board Member of the NC Wildlife Federation

Boone

March 22 at the Watauga County Public Library, 6-7:30pm

Panelists: Josh Kelly, Public Lands Field Biologist for MountainTrue

Julie White, Director of the Southern Off-Road Mountain Bicycle Association (SORBA)

Jim Sitts, Appalachian Timber Manager for Columbia Forest Products

Curtis Smalling, Director of Conservation for Audubon North Carolina in Boone

Deirdre Perot, Representative of BackCountry Horsemen of Pisgah

Brevard

March 27 at the Transylvania County Public Library, 6-7:30pm

Panelists: Tom Thomas, President of Back Country Horsemen of NC and Member of

North Carolina Horse Council

Megan Sutton, Southern Blue Ridge Program Director of The Nature Conservancy

David Whitmire, Fish & Wildlife Conservation Council and Co-Owner of Headwaters Outfitters

Kevin Colburn, National Stewardship Director of American Whitewater

Fred Hardin, Forester with Gilkey Lumber Company

Andrews

March 29 at the Andrews Community Center, 6-7:30pm

Panelists: Callie Moore, Executive Director of the Hiwassee Watershed Coalition

Tommy Cabe, Tribal Forest Resource Specialist for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians

Sophia Paulos, Economic Development Director of Graham County

Chris Coxen, District Biologist for the National Wild Turkey Federation

The panels in Sylva, Boone and Andrews will be moderated by journalist and professor of economics at Blue Ridge Community College Jack Igelman. The panel in Brevard will be moderated by Lee McMinn of the Transylvania County Resources Council. The events are free and open to the public, and will include a question-and-answer portion with the audience at the end. Refreshments will be provided.

The panel events are sponsored by MountainTrue and the following members of the Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Partnership: Access Fund, American Whitewater, Backcountry Horsemen of NC, Carolina Land & Lakes RC&D, Columbia Forest Products, Defenders of Wildlife, Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition, International Mountain Bicycling Association, North Carolina Horse Council, North Carolina Youth Camp Association, Root Cause, Southern Appalachian Mineral Society, Southern Appalachian Wilderness Stewards, Southern Off-Road Bicycle Association, The Nature Conservancy, Trout Unlimited, the Wilderness Society, and Wild South. The panel in Brevard is also sponsored by the Fish & Wildlife Conservation Council.

For more information, visit: https://mountaintrue.org

RSVP for the event on Facebook:

Sylva: https://www.facebook.com/events/192008638062642/

Boone: https://www.facebook.com/events/152570672114961/

Brevard: https://www.facebook.com/events/170391063741025/

Andrews: https://www.facebook.com/events/340141849725131/

About MountainTrue:
MountainTrue is the oldest grassroots environmental non-profit in North Carolina and champions resilient forests, clean waters and healthy communities. We engage in policy advocacy at all levels of government, local project advocacy, and on-the-ground environmental restoration projects across 23 counties in our region.

About the Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Partnership:
The Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Partnership strives to create a lasting voice for innovative management and public investment in the public forests of North Carolina’s mountains for the future. We envision a thriving, resilient forest within its natural range of variation, able to support healthy ecosystems, wildlife populations, local economies, and traditional uses. We envision a forest with the connectivity and integrity to remain resilient in the face of the changes and challenges of the future.

About the WNC Fish & Wildlife Conservation Council:

The Fish and Wildlife Conservation Council, formed by a variety of sportsmen and other wildlife interests, supports the sound management and conservation of all wildlife resources in the Nantahala-Pisgah National Forest and provides support and positive guidance to ensure a diversity of wildlife thrives there.

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George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic Play for Clean Water

Media Contact: Teela Waggoner – 828-989-3587, teela.waggoner@movementmortgage.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Asheville, NC – The Waggoner Team with Movement Mortgage, the Matt and Molly Team of Keller Williams Realty, and 98.1 The River present George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic, with Lyric opening.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame artist and legendary funk act, George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic will light up the Salvage Station on Friday, May 11 to raise money for drinking water wells in Togo, West Africa. George Clinton revolutionized R&B during the ’70s, twisting soul music into funk by adding influences from several late-’60s heroes: Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, and Sly Stone. Decades of hits followed and Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic continue to wow crowds with some of the best live shows around. One of Asheville’s most popular bands will rock their soulful sound with an acoustic set for the VIP event and rock her entire band to open the show.

MountainTrue’s French Broad Riverkeeper works with the Yoto River Waterkeeper in Togo to provide safe, potable water, and proceeds from the show will fund a drinking water well in rural west Africa. This is an area where most people lack access to clean drinking water and additional clean drinking water sources are desperately needed. This partnership has already created three wells that now provide clean drinking water to hundreds of Togolese.

Tickets: On sale Thursday March 1st at 10am.

$29 presale and $34 at the door.

VIP tickets: $125 include a preparty at the Salvage Station from 5-7pm with appearance by George Clinton, acoustic set by the talented Lyric, full catered meal, drinks, and roped off viewing area with private bar. Get tickets at salvagestation.com.

MT Raleigh Report – Feb. 19: GenX Gridlock in the General Assembly

Over the last month, the North Carolina General Assembly has met twice in “special session” to consider legislation to address one of the most high-profile threats to our state’s water quality – and public health – in recent years. Of course, we’re referring to the discovery of GenX, an “emerging contaminant” in the Cape Fear River as well as other public drinking water supplies in North Carolina.

GenX is the commonly used term for a chemical compound produced to make Teflon, which is used to make nonstick coating surfaces for cookware.

GenX and its chemical cousins – other perfluorinated and polyfluorinated compounds – are poorly studied, generally do not break down in the environment, cannot be removed by most water treatment techniques, can behave strangely in the human body and have largely unknown health risks.

Unfortunately, despite statewide media attention and widespread public concern, the General Assembly has been unable to approve legislation to address this pressing problem. You may recall that MountainTrue first reported on the GenX issue in a Special Report in November 2017.

The General Assembly’s recent inaction reflects a growing split between the GOP-controlled House, which is increasingly more interested in responding to the GenX issue, and the GOP-controlled Senate, which continues to balk at the demands of Gov. Roy Cooper – and the House – for increased investment in the state agencies charged with responding to the GenX issue.

This split came into high profile in the legislature’s special session in early January, when House Republicans offered to provide the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) with $2.3 million for staff and equipment to address GenX. When the Senate refused to consider the idea, House Republicans ran the bill anyway, got a unanimous, bipartisan vote in support of the proposal and sent it over to the Senate, which refused to even take the legislation up for debate.

Fast-forward almost a month later, to Feb. 7, when legislators arrived in Raleigh for another special session. This time it was the Senate’s turn to take up the GenX issue. Like the House a month before, the Senate offered DEQ more than $2 million in one-time funding. But, in an awkwardly worded bill, the Senate restricted the money’s use to a limited scope of work that did not include permanent funding for the new staff and equipment Cooper and Department officials say they need to respond to GenX.

The Senate approved the bill along partisan lines, but this time it was the House that refused to consider the bill. The result was another stalemate that no one in Raleigh expects will end any time soon.

What’s behind the Senate’s reluctance to invest in the state’s response to GenX? Many Senate GOP members are unwilling to spend taxpayer dollars on GenX as a result of their belief that the Cooper administration and DEQ were slow to respond to the issue and won’t put the funding to good use.

The House bill, Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger said in a statement, “does nothing to prevent GenX from going into the water supply. It leaves North Carolina taxpayers holding the bag for expenditures that should be paid for by the company responsible for the pollution, fails to give DEQ authority to do anything they can’t already do, and authorizes the purchase of expensive equipment that the state can already access for free.”

What Berger and his Senate colleagues fail to acknowledge however is the strain responding to the GenX issue is putting on the Department and its backlog of water quality permits awaiting processing because of staff shortages. It is a sad irony that just as DEQ was looking into the GenX issue last year, the legislature was cutting its budget.

Now we have a stalemate over a growing pollution problem that may affect hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians, is straining the already too-meager resources of state regulatory agencies and which the legislature either can’t or won’t address.

Meanwhile, an increasing number of people living near the Chemours plant are drinking bottled water after their wells have tested positive for GenX. There are also growing concerns – still being explored by DEQ – about food supplies in the region after GenX was discovered in honey harvested near the Chemours site. And state officials acknowledge that for those living near Chemours, airborne GenX may be a bigger threat than the waterborne version of the compound, so they have expanded their testing to include both.

Oh, and don’t forget that GenX has also been detected in treated water in Cary and Chatham County.

For MountainTrue, our priorities for this issue are the same ones we listed for you several months ago. We believe it is well past time for the legislature (and DEQ for that matter) to respond to the GenX situation, both in the Cape Fear region and statewide. This response should include:

A full audit of all industrial discharges into North Carolina rivers and streams so that we understand what chemicals are being discharged into our water;
Expanded state investment in water quality monitoring to detect emerging contaminants in all public drinking water supplies;
Full enforcement of the state’s authority under the Clean Water Act to detect emerging contaminants and to ensure they do not pose a risk to human health or the environment until proven otherwise;
Full public disclosure of the results of water monitoring and discharge audits so that everyone — including the public — understands what is in our water; and
A transparent, open decision-making process to determine the best way to eliminate, reduce and prevent emerging contaminants in public drinking water.

Deciding the Next 15 Years for Western NC’s Forests: The Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Management Plan

This year, the National Forest Service will share the first draft of a new management plan for Western North Carolina’s two national forests, Nantahala and Pisgah.

This big-picture plan changes every 15 years, and is incredibly important because it sets the ground rules for all activities in the forests: from wildlife management and timber sales on public lands to the hiking, fishing and mountain biking for which our region is famous. Everyone who loves our forests has an issue they care about that will be impacted by the new forest management plan.

Comprising more than a million acres combined, Nantahala and Pisgah are a central part of our natural and cultural heritage and a driver of our region’s economy. Generations of people stretching back to the first inhabitants of the Blue Ridge have depended on our beautiful mountains, forests, rivers and streams for their livelihoods. Our crafts, cuisine and culture reflect this deep connection to the land. Nantahala and Pisgah are also among the most biodiverse temperate forests on earth, with more than 2,000 species of plants, over 400 bird species (over 220 that rely on these forests for nesting,) and more than 100 species of mammals that attract attention from biology experts and enthusiasts from all over the world.

Looking Glass rock amidst Western NC’s famous fall colors.

The blackbelly salamander, a native to the Appalachian Mountains.

To honor this heritage and range of virtues, MountainTrue’s approach to our public lands seeks balance and sustainability. We want a forest plan that:

Protects our wild places and unique natural habitats for future generations,
Benefits our region’s economy,
Includes timber harvest as a tool for restoration and habitat creation,
And continues to offer inspiration, adventure and solitude to all of us who enjoy these mountains.

Previous management plans for Nantahala and Pisgah have come up short. The 1987 plan tilted too far toward resource extraction and put our wild places and sources of clean water and recreation at risk. The Western North Carolina Alliance (now MountainTrue) appealed that plan, eventually prompting the Forest Service to add a 1994 amendment with protections for streams and springs, and to begin restoration for old-growth forests that had been decimated at the turn of the 20th Century. But the goals of the 1994 amendment were not realized due to decreasing federal budgets, lack of political leadership for protective designations, and a lack of ecosystem specific priorities for timber harvest and restoration.

Fast forward to recent years: the early draft of the forest management plan released in 2014 would have zoned almost 70% of the forest for timber management. MountainTrue again pushed back, with thousands of our supporters asking the Forest Service for a more balanced forest plan.

Those of us who care about our forests are trying something different this time: coming to the Forest Service with a win-win vision first.

That’s why MountainTrue is an enthusiastic participant in the Nantahala Pisgah Forest Partnership, a collaborative group that has gathered in the spirit of cooperation and compromise to bring all forest interest groups into the same room at once: timber, water, wildlife, recreation, wilderness and more. We don’t leave anyone behind, and we believe it’s critical that everyone be willing to support everyone else’s values with the expectation that the support will be reciprocal. For the past five years, the Partnership has come up with a vision and a set of win-win strategies for a forest plan that allows all of our interests to co-exist and thrive.

The Forest Service has also received recommendations from other groups participating in the forest plan revision, and now we want to share the best of those ideas with you. Check out our events calendar for upcoming panels, presentations and information sessions about the forest plan.

With the forest management plan expected to be released this year and the draft environmental impact statement expected this spring, this is your chance to take part in constructive dialogue with other voices that rely on our forests. These forests are valuable national treasures that deserve the best plan around – we hope you’ll help make that vision a reality!

Sign Up for our Richmond Hill Invasives Removal Work Day March 10!

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MountainTrue has worked for the past six years to restore Asheville’s only forested park, Richmond Hill. A favorite of dog walkers, mountain bikers and disc golf fans, the park has unfortunately become overrun with non-native invasive plants like multiflora rose, which has very sharp thorns that can harm our canine companions. The invasives crowd out native species and prevent them from growing, reduce valuable habitat, and diminish the natural beauty of the woods.

We have seen incredible improvements at Richmond Hill since holding invasive species removal days, with a 95% reduction of invasive species in some areas! We hope you’ll join us for our next restoration workday on March 10th, and we will subsequently host work days at Richmond Hill on the second Saturday of every month for the rest of the year.

Where: Richmond Hill Park, 280 Richmond Hill Drive, Asheville, NC 28806

When: Saturday, March 10 2018 from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm

Other Info: Be sure to wear long sleeves and pants as well as closed-toed shoes to this event. Bring a snack and water. We will provide all other equipment necessary! We ask that you leave your pets at home for this work day.