Sunday, October 29, 2006
The AT: An uncertain path
Mounting threats imperil the Appalachian Trail as it approaches its 70th anniversary
Sam Dean | The Roanoke Times
Aurora Maldovanyi enjoys an early fall hike in Grayson Highlands State Park, one of the most ecologically sensitive sections of the Appalachian Trail.
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Tom Smith stood on McAfee Knob, an outcropping known for its lofty views along the Appalachian Trail.
He looked at the horizon. He frowned. The ethereal blues of the Blue Ridge Mountains and their dozen shades of green were lost in a haze of particle pollution.
“You used to be able to see forever,” said Smith, who’s hiked on America’s favorite footpath for nearly half a century. “I guess everything changes, even the AT.”
The Appalachian Trail, a place of natural wonder and human retreat, is the most protected long-distance trail in the world. But it’s also a fragile dirt path, a battered remnant of the nation’s original wildlands.
As its 70th anniversary approaches next year, the “AT” is broadening its mission to combat mounting threats to the trail and the surrounding wilderness that provides millions of Americans with clean air, fresh water, recreation, wood products and other environmental and economic benefits.
Those threats — namely sprawl, pollution, invasive species, habitat loss and fragmentation, global warming — are imperiling one of the most biologically diverse places in the world, according to the National Park Service and the Appalachian Trail Conservancy.
Research shows smog in the Shenandoah Valley and Great Smoky Mountains is often worse than in downtown Los Angeles. Gypsy moths and other invaders have killed millions of trees. Nature’s indicators, such as songbirds and mussels, are declining. Miles of the AT are eroded because younger Americans aren’t replacing aging volunteers who maintain the trail.
For two-thirds of the U.S. population, that doesn’t just mean a spoiled walk in the woods.
According to scientists, land managers and economists, it means more cardiopulmonary disease, more wildfires, higher floodwaters, more mosquitoes, poison ivy and other pests.
It means local economies lose billions of dollars in recreation, tourism, timber, agriculture and other industries.
It means fewer birds, whose songs and bright colors you may not miss, but whose role in a healthy ecosystem — controlling insects, dispersing seeds and pollinating plants — you surely will.
The effects can be felt close to home, too: In the Blue Ridge Mountains, known for brilliant blossoms and leaf-peeping hardwoods; in Virginia, which has more miles of the AT than any other state; and in Roanoke, the largest city along the trail.
In recent years, the AT’s army of volunteers — all descendants of the visionary who penned the idea in the 1920s and the pragmatist who built it during the Depression — have almost finished acquiring enough land to create a permanently protected trail corridor on public property.
Now, AT managers say, the time has come to expand the mission of the national scenic trail: Rather than treating it as just a recreational footpath, they’ve decided to use the Appalachian Trail to monitor the ecological health of the entire Eastern seaboard.
The goal is to better protect the region’s natural resources and to help Americans understand global warming and other issues occurring in their own back yards.
“The Appalachian Trail has a great legacy — it’s an iconic connection to our public lands,” said Laura Belleville, regional director in Southwest and central Virginia for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, the private, non profit group that manages the trail. “But there’s an urgency that unless something is done soon, that legacy will disappear.”
Preserving trail’s health
The AT’s new mission is an unprecedented experiment — essentially turning the trail into an environmental early-warning system, a 2,175-mile-long laboratory of the East’s natural world, the forces that affect it and the millions of people whose lives are intertwined with it.
AT officials said many Americans once regarded them as the “big bad government” who wanted to take their property and let strangers into their back yards.
“Twenty years ago, people were wildly against us,” said Don Owen, environmental protection specialist with the National Park Service’s Appalachian National Scenic Trail. “But their fears haven’t happened. There’s been a significant shift toward people realizing that we really do know something about land use and stopping uncontrolled growth from reaching their front doors.”
Authorities have taken preliminary steps to broaden the trail’s mission in recent years, but they will formalize that effort in November when 65 scientists, natural resource managers, educators and policymakers gather for a symposium on the AT’s future.
They will discuss how to turn the Appalachian Trail into the world’s first permanent “mega-transect,” which is a scientific survey across a large geographic region.
Previous such scientific expeditions were one-time efforts, including Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s journey across the American West from 1803- 06.
Scientist Michael Fay, who completed a mega-transect of central Africa from 1999-2000, will be the keynote speaker at the AT symposium Nov. 9-11 at the National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, W.Va.
Much of what is known about the Appalachian Trail’s deteriorating condition comes from a growing number of monitoring efforts by scientists and volunteers scattered up and down the trail.
Those preliminary assessments, summarized in a “Vital Signs” report last fall, provide a snapshot of the trail’s health. But officials say a mega-transect would provide the big picture by creating a scientific baseline, comprehensive inventory and trail wide monitoring program.
Cost estimates and other specifics have not been determined for the AT’s new mission. But over the next several years, trail officials want to create a science-based action plan; secure major funding from legislators, corporations and foundations; and recruit thousands of new volunteers to monitor streams, track invasive species and do other “citizen-scientist” efforts as well as to maintain the trail.
“The paradox is the AT itself has been seriously damaged and we’re fighting this onslaught of threats, but there’s a need to take on this broader effort,” said Mari Omland, the ATC’s director of conservation. “We have to broaden the AT’s relevance to solve these problems.”
Striking a balance
John Randall, director of the Nature Conservancy’s Global Invasive Species Initiative, praised AT managers for trying to preserve the East’s biodiversity so that hemlocks, firs and other besieged species might not follow the once mighty chestnut into oblivion.
“Invasive species can wreak havoc on the landscape and eco systems and character of a region,” he said.
David Carr, senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, said the AT should be used both for hiking and the larger purpose of environmental monitoring.
“If we don’t protect the ecosystems through which the trail runs, people will be less inclined to travel the trail,” he said.
Not everyone is certain about the trail’s expanded mission.
“A lot of local members think we should be concerned with maintenance and membership and protecting the trail for recreation,” said Kerry Wood, ATC regional volunteer program manager in Blacksburg. “A lot of causes are worth our time, and it’s a cool idea — taking the pulse of the environment through the AT — but if you float off into la-la land, you can lose track of the original mission.”
Leonard Adkins, an outdoors writer and avid hiker from Botetourt County, said many hikers worry the AT is changing from a “mom and pop operation” to a top-down corporate management style.
“My view is protecting the AT from encroachment on the natural world is the most important thing,” said Adkins, “so I think we’re headed in the right direction, although I think the actual footpath will suffer to some degree.”
Rupert Cutler, a former Roanoke city councilman and an assistant secretary of conservation in the Carter administration, praised the AT’s new environmental monitoring mission, but he said the trail’s heritage as a footpath shouldn’t be neglected.
“I think this more sophisticated conservation biology approach is very welcome,” Cutler said, “but don’t make it a substitute for the original mission.”
Frank Maisano, an energy industry spokesman with the Bracewell & Giuliani law firm in Washington, D.C., said responsible development won’t harm the East’s environment.
“Obviously, there’s concern that our open spaces be preserved, but there are also development needs on the East Coast that have to be addressed,” he said. “It’s always a tough balance.”
Michael Mortimer, chairman of the Virginia division of the Society of American Foresters, said an AT mega-transect could become a “policy surrogate” for groups looking to restrict timber cutting and other uses of public and private lands outside the trail corridor.
“The surrogate approach oversimplifies issues and is typically politically and socially polarizing,” said Mortimer, an assistant professor of forest law and policy at Virginia Tech. “It very seldom leads to thoughtful and scientific resource decisions. The AT could tend to serve as a rallying point for folks that prefer a symbol over addressing the more complex problems.”
Green roller-coaster ride
The AT’s expanded mission culminates a movement that started nearly two decades ago as the final phase of land acquisition, path-building and securing a protective corridor started winding down.
The mega-transect idea was proposed in 1999 by two Harvard University researchers. Since then, AT advocates have been compiling data, building partnerships and monitoring more of the trail’s natural resources.
In 2005, the ATC changed its name from Appalachian Trail Conference to Appalachian Trail Conservancy to reflect its new focus on protecting natural resources.
The AT doesn’t have the centralized grandeur of Yosemite, the Grand Canyon and other marquee national parks, but its advocates see a cumulative majesty that extends more than 2,000 miles like a green roller coaster over the rooftop of the congested eastern United States.
Charles Parry, a Virginia Tech professor and a long time AT volunteer, has seen the changes wrought on the trail as part of America’s post-World War II expansion.
A farmer’s son, he has cheerfully worked the earthen trail for three decades, moving rocks, swinging picks, clearing blow-down, channeling away rainwater.
Parry said the AT originally provided a wilderness experience in the midst of the industrialized East. Now, he said, it’s becoming more of an illusion of wilderness as sprawl and pollution further encroach into one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world.
“Everyone’s going to be affected,” he said, “whether they realize it or not.”
