Threats to the AT, Contd

EVOLVING GOALS In 2005, the ATC's board voted to change the nonprofit group's name from the Appalachian Trail Conference to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. David Startzell, the ATC executive director, says the name had always confused people encountering it for the first time. "I've sometimes joked, although it's true, that for years I've been getting Meeting Planner magazine because people thought that was our business, planning conferences," Startzell says. "So we felt—and this was borne out through some testing—that 'conservancy' just conveyed to people less familiar with us what we're about."

HOW TO GET INVOLVED

Maintain
AMC chapters always need trail volunteers - no experience is required to get started, and the time commitment is up to you. AMC is also organizing two one-week AT Teen Crews in the Berkshires this summer. See the Volunteer Crew schedule.

Monitor
AT Corridor Monitors check for encroachment on the trail corridor, maintain boundary markers, and cut back vegetation to maintain a clear boundary line. Monitors needed in NH, MA, CT and PA

Educate
In New Hampshire, the Alpine Stewardship Volunteer Program, a joint AMC and US Forest Service program, provides hiker education on the importance of staying on the trail, ridge safety, and Leave No Trace ethics along the Franconia Ridge section of the AT. In Massachusetts and Connecticut, ridgerunners provide similar information to AT users. Apply for seasonal ridgerunner positions.

With ever-expanding electricity power lines, industrial and utility projects such as wind farms, housing developments, and even small-scale logging projects threatening the trail, the ATC recognized that member clubs and regional partnership committees were increasingly concerned about the land bordering the protected 250,000-acre trail corridor.

In Pennsylvania, for example, a car racetrack was approved for land near the AT, on Blue Mountain in Eldred Township, because there were no regulations against such enterprises. In response, Pennsylvania state Rep. Bob Freeman introduced a bill last year that would require Pennsylvania towns near the trail to enact land use rules protecting open space around the AT corridor. That bill passed the state House and went to the state Senate in early 2008.

The ATC has taken an inventory of threats to the land around the AT, and the most serious priorities include the following:

Rocky Fork, a tract through which 1.5 miles of the AT passes in eastern Tennessee, one of the last stretches of the trail that remains in private hands.
The Roan Highlands, along the North Carolina-Tennessee border, where conservation groups are working to protect 9,000 acres of adjacent land.
Wesser Bald, a mountain in North Carolina where another AT section remains in private ownership. The ATC aims to protect 90 acres around the mountain.

AMC's land conservation advocacy efforts also benefit the trail. For example, in the Mahoosuc region in Maine and New Hampshire, the land between the Androscoggin River area in Gorham, N.H., and the summit of Maine's Old Speck is owned by timber and land investment companies and is under threat of sale or development in the near future. The ATC, the Trust for Public Land, The Conservation Fund, and the Mahoosuc Land Trust are working together to conserve land in the area. Recent successes include the Grafton Notch Parcel in Maine. A coalition of land trusts and other local groups, which includes AMC, the ATC, the Northern Forest Alliance, and The Wilderness Society, is also working with local residents to identify sustainable land use practices in the Mahoosuc region to bolster local economies while stimulating conservation.

AMC's advocacy for federal land conservation funding seeks to protect key parcels bordering the AT corridor in the Northeast. As a founder of the Highlands Coalition, AMC is asking Congress to fully fund the Highlands Conservation Act, which covers a four-state region.

AMC is also seeking increased funding for the Forest Legacy program. While private funds raised by AMC for its Maine Woods Initiative have protected 37,000 acres and buffered about 17 miles of the AT corridor in the famed 100-Mile Wilderness, a Forest Legacy grant enabled the state of Maine to secure a permanent conservation easement on the property. As part of this project, AMC is also engaged in a partnership to potentially protect an additional 28,000 acres to the north, which would buffer an additional 4 to 5 miles of the corridor.

Fiscal year 2009 funds from the Forest Legacy, Highlands Conservation Act, and Land and Water Conservation Fund could conserve lands close to the AT such as the Tree Farm #1-Mount Hope Tract in Pennsylvania, the Greater Sterling Forest project in New York, and two projects in the Delaware Water Gap in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, according to Kristen Sykes, AMC's Mid-Atlantic policy manager.

Development on neighboring lands isn't the only threat. The number of hikers has altered the trail experience, too. That can be good and bad, Startzell says. "We do have a number of sites that have been hammered." The ATC has researched the impacts of high numbers of campers on shelters and campsites and established standards for these areas—such as requiring large groups to get permits in some locations—to reduce damage. The ATC is also considering what Startzell calls the psychological impacts of hiking the trail in high-use seasons. People don't expect to go into the woods and find a crowd.

ATC's staff members in regional offices closely monitor development proposals for everything from ski area expansions to housing developments, logging encroachment, cell phone towers, and power line enlargements. AMC partnered with the ATC, the Maine Appalachian Trail Club, and Maine Audubon to successfully oppose a proposal to build a wind farm on Redington and Black Nubble mountains in Maine. The project would have affected views from the AT as well as wildlife habitat. (AMC is supporting wind projects elsewhere in the state.)

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