We are incredibly lucky to be in the Southern Blue Ridge mountains, with natural treasures like native brook trout streams, just like the one near my childhood home in Madison County. Like many of you, I fell in love with the outdoors and any opportunity to play in the water or fish at a young age. Once you’ve experienced the beauty of catching trout, it’s not hard to understand why it’s a tradition for so many in these mountains we call home. 

Photo: MountainTrue’s Josh Kelly fly fishing in a stream in Pisgah National Forest. 

One stream I grew up fishing was Fall Branch, and it was loaded with brook trout until an upstream landowner logged the forest in the headwaters. Two hundred and twenty acres of mature forest protected those streams, but they were gone in an instant. The logging job was done with the goal of making a profit, without regard for the native species that relied on this clean mountain stream.

Miles of poorly built logging roads eroded into the creek, clogging it with silt and smothering any chance for many native species to reproduce and thrive. There are no longer any native brook trout in Fall Branch, and there may never be again.

This story is being played out all across our Nantahala Pisgah National Forests. Roads are being built but not maintained, and forests are being cut in sensitive ecosystems that are important to us all. We need you to help us protect these places. Please consider making a donation today. 

With your donation, we can continue to work to protect these ecosystems so others can experience the same joy of growing up in the Southern Blue Ridge. Your donation directly allows the longevity of these forests to continue through the monitoring of logging projects and forest studies on how to protect the places we share. You can help fund our biologists and water quality specialists to collect the data necessary to persuade our local and state governments. Your support allows our volunteers and communication team to inform the public and rally support for protecting the forests that sustain us all.

The support you bring directly impacts the change you see. With you by our side, we will continue to fight to protect these valuable, deep-rooted traditions and the forests that allow them to exist.

Thank you for your commitment to our shared mission of protecting the places we share.

Josh Kelly, MountainTrue Public Lands Field Biologist