Our Scavenger Hunts Will Help You Learn About Your Neighborhood’s Native and Invasive Species
These days, many of us are spending more time at home. Now that the weather is warming up, we hope you get the chance to get outside and explore your neighborhood! The next time you’re out for a stroll, we hope you’ll consider taking along one of our scavenger hunts to learn a thing or two about your neighborhood!
To start, we’d like to challenge you to keep an eye out for something that doesn’t belong — non-native invasive plants. At MountainTrue, much of our work on public lands is dominated by concerns about invasive plants, and we’ve spent thousands of hours removing them from our most important forest areas. However, it is far easier to stop these species before they take root, and our yards are often the source. If you’d like to get involved, the first step is to learn what to look out for by downloading our Neighborhood Invasives Scavenger Hunt!
We’d also like to better acquaint you with 10 native species that often grace our urban and suburban areas, with our Introduction to Neighborhood Natives Scavenger Hunt. We hope to help you identify these species if you aren’t familiar with them, or simply share some fun facts for you more experienced botanists! If you’re not so interested in plants, we’ve also created a Native Birds Scavenger Hunt to learn about some of our most common neighborhood visitors.
We hope you’ll take this opportunity to explore your local environment with us. Tag us on social media (@mtntrue) with your finds, and happy hunting!
While AT hikers have been asked to leave the trail due to social distancing concerns, there is another (virtual) way to explore that iconic trail. Enter, Walk the Distance. Walk the Distance is a free app that uses the pedometer built into most phones to help you turn your neighborhood strolls into a backpacking adventure. It takes your steps and translates them into distance hiked along the AT, tracking your progress for each little lunchtime walk. When you reach a shelter, overlook, or other checkpoint, you’ll get a congratulatory notification.
This app is quite simple to set up, user-friendly, and without many extraneous features. Simply pick which walk you’d like to do, and get walking! One fun perk is that you can add friends, and see one another’s progress along the trail. If desired, you can get notified anytime a friend passes you, perhaps encouraging you to make time for a longer walk! (You can alter what notifications you receive under settings). We will be renewing our walking habit by launching an account that you can friend and follow- just search for MT Forest Keeper on the Friends tab- and let’s walk together.
Find the app on Google Play or the iTunes App Store. Registration in the app requires an email address.
As social creatures, we need to maintain our connections and find new ways to lean on each other during hard times. As creatures of nature, we need to connect with our forests, our rivers and the plants and animals we share this planet with. Today more than ever, we appreciate how important clean water and healthy forests are to our mountain communities.
Hikers like to say, ‘the trail gives you what you need’. I’ve experienced that personally and watched it play out in the lives of others. So regardless of whether you are looking for community, solitude, a challenge, stillness, simplicity, therapy, inspiration, resilience, or reassurance… there’s a good chance you’ll find it in the woods.
Jennifer Pharr Davis
Owner, Blue Ridge Hiking Company and 2012 National Geographic Adventurer of the Year
But our forests and rivers would not have been the wonderful sanctuaries Jennifer describes had they not been protected by people like you. Together, we have built a legacy of action to be proud of. You stopped timber companies from clearcutting in Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests. You kept the pressure on Duke Energy until they were ordered to clean up their coal ash pits and move their toxic ash to lined landfills where they will no longer pollute our rivers.
When you stand with MountainTrue, you fight for our environment. Will you stand alongside MountainTrue this Earth Day?
The fight to protect the health of our forests, rivers, and mountain communities is more important than ever. We ask that you donate today so we can continue to protect the places we share.
Happy 50th Earth Day, and thank you for being part of MountainTrue and making this work possible!
The Forest Service is accepting public comment on the draft forest management plan for all 1.045 million acres of Nantahala and Pisgah National Forests — a plan that will set priorities and protections for the next 15-20 years of these public lands. This current comment period is our last meaningful chance to provide input on how these public lands are managed.
These forests belong to all of us. Let’s make sure they are managed for the benefit of all forest users, our environment and future generations.
ICYMI: Watch Our Forest Plan Info Session
Nearly one hundred people joined us on the evening of April 7 for our live online info session on the draft forest management plan for the Nantahala-Pisgah National Forests. During the session, our Public Lands Field Biologist Josh Kelly presented MountainTrue’s analysis of the draft plan and took questions from the audience. If you missed the webinar, you can watch it on YouTube.
The info session was emceed by MountainTrue Public Engagement Manager Susan Bean, and the Q&A segment was moderated by Western Regional Director Callie Moore. We were fortunate to be joined by Alice Cohen of the U.S. Forest Service, who kicked off the webinar with a brief overview of the forest management planning process.
Stay tuned for future forest plan info sessions where we’ll dive into specific regions and topics such as water quality and recreation infrastructure.
News About MountainTrue’s Work In the Coming Weeks — And Our COVID-19 Activity Guide
As our mountain communities brace for the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, MountainTrue is doing our part to help reduce the spread of the virus, and mitigate the health risks to our communities and our staff.
As of Monday, March 16, our four offices in Asheville, Boone, Hendersonville and Murphy are closed to the public. Our staff will still be working hard to protect the places we share, but many of us will be doing so from home or out in the field where we’ll be following recommended protocols.
Following the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and public health officials, we are also canceling all of our public events, hikes and training sessions for this spring, and our volunteer-based water monitoring programs, river cleanups and public lands workdays will be on hiatus until further notice.
This Isn’t A Goodbye, It’s New Way of Saying ‘Hello Neighbor’
Together, there’s still so much that we can do to advocate for our environment and our communities, and to break through the isolation of “social distancing.” Though we’ll miss interacting with our members, volunteers and supporters face-to-face, we’re excited to be able to provide you with easy options to take action and new ways of engaging with us and each other.
Seven Things You Can Do Right Now
Sign the petition for I Love Rivers – Our Broad, French Broad, Green and Watauga Riverkeepers and our Western Water Team have developed a comprehensive plan for cleaning up our rivers by tackling faulty sewer and septic system infrastructure, helping agricultural landowners prevent bacterial pollution, and reducing litter from single-use plastics. Show your support! iloverivers.org
Plant a native garden – Help protect our forests, public lands and local wildlife by planting a sustainable garden. Our invasive plants team has put together a great resource for gardeners and landscapers that offers beautiful native plant alternatives to our region’s most damaging non-native invasive plant species. mountaintrue.org/plantguide
Go on a hike and keep yourself healthy and calm – Getting out in nature is good for the body and soul. While we’re sad to have had to cancel our annual spring hikes and outings, MountainTrue’s Public Lands and Engagement teams are excited to be working on a list of self-guided hikes. More to come soon!
Complete the 2020 Census online – The Census comes around every 10 years and this year’s couldn’t have come at a more challenging time. Make sure you are counted because the census helps determine the number of seats that are allocated in the U.S. House of Representatives, how federal monies are distributed to state and local governments, and how local, state and congressional district boundaries are drawn. 2020census.gov
Support our local businesses – As the CDC issues stricter guidelines, local restaurants and businesses are suffering. Consider buying gift cards from your favorite businesses that you can use once isolation is over. And instead of crowding into local bars and restaurants, consider ordering for delivery or pickup. For Asheville, check out #AshevilleStrong for a directory of businesses where you can buy gift cards. In other towns, contact the businesses directly.
Attend worship services online – Maintaining your connections to your community is important and for many of us that means attending church or worship services. Our Creation Care Alliance program has a running list of local churches providing services online.
Talk to us on social media – It’s going to get pretty lonely, so let’s connect on Facebook and Instagram. MountainTrue and our Riverkeepers all have Facebook and Instagram accounts, and we want to engage with our members to establish a deeper dialogue about the work we do, the priorities of our organization and the needs of our region.
In the coming weeks and days, we’ll be rolling out more things for you to do during the pandemic, more community resources and some ideas for mutual aid. But we also want to hear from you! Please feel free to respond to this email with your ideas, struggles and stories of perseverance. Let us know how you are keeping your spirits up, finding community in the age of COVID-19, and helping your neighbors during this trying time.
In the coming months, COVID-19 is going to test our health care system, our economy and our society. That’s why it is so important that communities around the country and here in our region find ways to help each other even when we can’t hug each other. During more normal times, it’s easy to treat our neighbors as strangers. Easier to avert our eyes than to initiate an awkward hello. Now, we all feel that imperative to connect and help each other even if we don’t really know each other, yet. Let’s tap into that need for connection to strengthen our communities and build new ones.
As many of you have heard through news reports or from our last e-news, the draft management plan and environmental impact statement for the Nantahala-Pisgah National Forests were released on Friday, February 14. Our forest team is reviewing the more than 2,000 pages contained in those documents and will soon be offering our members and supporters thorough analysis to assist you in providing meaningful public comments to the forest service.
We are also scheduling a series of Forest Management Plan presentations and comment-writing parties throughout our region where our staff will present our analysis, answer your questions and help you write your comments, if desired. Below is our first round of events.
More public comment events hosted by MountainTrue are being planned and we will update you when dates and locations are confirmed for events in Mills River, Sylva, Morganton, Asheville and Bryson City.
As we schedule additional events, we’ll also be adding them to our Forest Plan Calendar.
The Nantahala and Pisgah belong to all of us, and this is the process whereby we, the public, ensure that the Forest Service manages and maintains them according to our values. The management plan determines which areas are protected, which areas will be scheduled for timber projects or managed for restoration, and how projects, like trail building and maintenance, are prioritized.
This forest management plan has been in development since 2013, and this is the public’s last significant opportunity to have our say. The public comment period lasts 90 days (until May 14), and you can submit as many public comments as you like. So, even if you’ve already submitted a comment, you can attend our parties to learn more and add your additional concerns to the public record.
MountainTrue’s Josh Kelly participated in Carolina Public Press’s NewsMakers Forum on the Future of Pisgah-Nantahala National Forest. Watch it here.
Our first impressions of the Forest Plan is that the Forest Service has made a good faith effort to include the values of all constituencies, but that there’s still a lot of room for improvement. All the action alternatives have some elements that we like, and some we don’t.
Some specific areas of concern that we’ve already identified:
The draft plan does not include any certain protections for existing old-growth forests. The Draft Environmental Impact Statement documents that all forest ecosystems are deficient in old-growth, very young forest, and open canopy forest compared to the best models of the natural variation in these systems. Unsustainable logging 100-140 years ago, fire suppression, and other factors have gotten us where we are today. Cutting existing old-growth will only make the matter worse, and the Forest Plan should require that old-growth be protected from regeneration harvest — the process by which older forests are cut to make younger forests.
The draft plan does not specify if or how old-growth forests will be tracked, making monitoring of the goal of increasing the amount of old-growth on the ground unachievable.
The draft plan does not include specific directions to protect many Natural Heritage Natural Areas that contain the best examples of rare species and natural communities in North Carolina. In all forest plan alternatives, between 34,000 and 68,000 acres of NHNAs are included in management areas with scheduled timber harvest. The Forest Plan should preclude regeneration harvest if a site-specific review finds them to be in a condition consistent with their identification as natural areas by the state.
The draft plan proposes a 15 ft. buffer on intermittent streams – streams that dry up during a drought. We believe that the intent is to protect those streams, but the plan should require a 50 ft. buffer of protection from heavy equipment such as bulldozers and skidders a default.
The current forest plan stipulates that any timber harvest on slopes over 40% must be accomplished with an aerial cable, where at least one end of the log is lifted off the ground, or other aerial logging method to protect soils and reduce the risk or erosion or landslides. The draft plan does away with that requirement and leaves the decision, increasing opportunities for human error. The new plan should also require that all harvest methods on steep slopes should protect the soil as effectively as aerial cable harvest.
Alternative C is the only alternative that would manage Big Ivy consistent with the Buncombe County resolution calling on the Forest Service to protect the area.
Moving forward, we continue to contribute as a member of the Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Partnership to come up with a collaborative, win-win proposal that takes the best aspects of each alternative provided by the Forest Service, and fixes any of the plan’s deficiencies in protecting water quality, old-growth forests, and natural areas.
To keep up with the latest Forest-related news and action alerts and to receive updates as we add forest plan events to our calendar, sign up here.
