Southern Currents: Appalachia In Recovery

Unknown Speaker 0:08 The following is a production of wild idea media. Bill Hodge 0:14 Welcome to the wild idea podcast, where we are exploring the intersection of wild nature and our own human nature, and this special series called Southern currents, a journey across the south here where we've been talking about issues affecting the landscape, from Arkansas over to where we are in this episode, which is Appalachia. And frankly, Appalachia in recovery. Hurricane hollene has changed Appalachia forever. It's a hurricane that almost 300 miles inland, disrupted so many lives, communities, and been the function of the ecosystem. Now, almost a year later, we bring you some of the work of recovery for Appalachia with some really true friends of the wild idea podcast, folks Anders that you and I have both worked with a great deal. Anders Reynolds 0:55 Firstly, Bill, I've been enjoying this special series so much, but today we have a really sobering conversation in front of us, and I'm really grateful to you for having it. We're almost a year on from Helene, and I can remember exactly how I felt in that moment, namely, terrified for my friends and colleagues in Asheville, as I'm sure you were too. I'm happy to report they're all dried out today, but I was reminded of the devastation to the southern apps and an article I read just this week in The New York Times on the Hellbender, aka lasagna lizard, aka snot otter, a salamander found in southern rivers and streams that is a big indicator of river health, and that is now endangered. The author of this article mentioned how worried he was that that that devastation wrought by Helene would mean there were no Hellbenders to be found, but there they were. So I guess there's some hope in that, and maybe some hope in your story too. Yeah, Bill Hodge 1:59 for sure, we absolutely talk about the Hellbender, and we talk about river health a lot, obviously, the hurricane itself and the record flooding scoured a lot of river beds, which is a concern for the Hellbender. But we also talk about, sometimes we do more damage with our recovery than the actual storm itself. And we talk about that a lot, because there's some, really, I'll just say nefarious things going on with some of the agencies charged with helping Appalachia recovery. You and I both worked pretty damn hard to protect some of the special landscapes of the southeast, but in a matter of hours, Mother Nature had her own designs on the place and for frankly, the people of Appalachia, they're a resilient bunch, and like the people the forest and rivers will recover. You know, I sat down with Jill Gottesman from The Wilderness Society for her experience with the hurricane itself and with where we are and recovering from the storm. But, but first, I sat down along the banks of the Davidson river with Josh Kelly from Mountain true, Ben Prater from Defenders of Wildlife, and our dear friend Sam Evans from the southern Environmental Law Center about the process of recovery, and we begin with the arrival of the storm itself. So guys, thanks for coming today. You know, I've worked with you guys over the years for a long time, and we've not really had a chance to sit down like this and catch up post Helene. And so I guess where I want to start is like how you weathered the storm, both in the moment, in the moments after and now, however many months later we are and Ben, maybe I'll start with you weathering. Helene, what's it what's the experience been? Speaker 1 3:35 Yeah, it was a it was a very harrowing few hours turned into many, many days and weeks. Felt very fortunate around my house and my property definitely had a lot of trees down, but nothing actually impacted the cars or the houses. Can't say the same for many of my neighbors. But yeah, those first 24 hours were really just about assessing, you know, any kind of damage, but also getting out kind of a neighborhood, checking in with neighbors see where things were. Obviously, all services were down, whether it was cell phone or water or power. So my family and I, for the first few days, just, you know, we'd done a good job of preparing and getting supplies together, but really just trying to check in on neighbors and find a way out. You know, that time every major road, actually, every road really was down power lines, down trees, so it took us about three days where we can even manage to travel outside of our neighborhood. And we made the decision at that time to relocate with some family in Charlotte for a while, and then I was making weekly runs down to bring supplies and check on friends and family. But yeah, it was, it was a wild a wild ride there for a minute. But again, I feel very fortunate how I was able to my family fared in the situation. Josh, how about you? Speaker 2 4:53 Well, about six weeks before the storm hit, a friend of mine called me up and asked me if I wanted to go on trip to the Boundary Waters. And I said, yeah. Yeah, I'd like to go on trip to the Boundary Waters. And so, you know, I've been, I'm a weather geek. I was watching the weather, and I saw the prediction for this storm coming and the prediction for all the rain before the storm. And I told all my friends, like, Hey, I was here in 2004 for hurricanes Francis and Ivan and Asheville water system went out. You should get some water. She'd make preparations. And yeah, I got on a airplane on September 25 and the airport was packed with people trying to get out of town, and rain was already coming down. The Swannanoa River actually flooded for the first time that night, that evening, from just the rain bands before Helene, and as I was going into the Boundary Waters on the morning of the 27th I was looking at the radar, and I was saying, oh my god, this is terrible. And I was trying to get in touch with with folks and see, see how folks are doing. And I wasn't able to get in touch with everybody. And so I just had to go into the wilderness and just accept that I could not affect anything that was happening on the ground. And North Carolina didn't really know what was didn't really know what was going on going on, and got out of the woods five days later and started the most epic Doom scroll you've ever seen for like, four hours. And I, in a couple hours, I knew more than anybody back home knew, because there's no communication still. This is like, five days after the storm. People still, most people didn't have a cell service, most people didn't have internet access, and I knew more than most people, and so I actually helped mountain tree, the organization I worked for, coordinate a lot of things from Minneapolis while I was stuck in Minneapolis, and wrote a grant to hire a chainsaw crew to help cut people homes out that had fallen trees and cut trees out of public parks and and Asheville didn't have drinking water and had a self evacuation request. So actually stayed in Minneapolis and went on another trip to the Boundary Waters, and came home nine days after the storm. And obviously what I saw when I got back was unbelievable, particularly with anywhere around the rivers, but the UN, you know, I think that the less told story is also all the trees that blew down and this huge loss of forest that blew down. It was really a unprecedented event. And I mean that for me, aftermath of the storm was just, just trying to, trying to help. And my personal, my personal stuff was fine, but the community was really impacted. Obviously, Bill Hodge 7:27 Sam, you talked about the lack of communication. They Ben touched on it, but like here, Josh knew more in Minneapolis than you knew at Ground Zero. Speaker 3 7:39 Yeah, and my, you know, my wife's dad, who had just come out of open heart surgery. At a certain point, we were, I think, about five days in, we were able to get from our neighborhood to his neighborhood and get them out of town. We took so we evacuated them down to Atlanta. And so about the same time, Josh was doing his doom scroll, I was doing mine. I actually wasn't able to absorb very much of it. Then, you know, I think, and still, I'm still going to places that I haven't been to yet. Yeah, and that was the same, of course, for everybody in our neighborhood, like our neighborhood was flooded at the bottom, so, you know, couldn't drive out. And then the other egress point was all covered in downed trees, so there was just no way to get out at all. And without text messages or cell service, we had really no idea beyond our immediate neighborhood what things were like. And we, of course, went around and checked people's houses where trees had fallen to make sure everybody was okay. That was sort of step one. And everybody had, you know, was physically safe. You know, a lot of houses were were damaged or ruined, but, but people were fine. And so we entered that sort of a honeymoon phase with the storm, where our neighborhood was coming together, pooling resources. My wife is always prepared. So we had like, 50 gallons of fresh water we were able to share. And a couple days into it, I realized that I also had a Garmin inReach in my backpacking gear. And so we would have daily meetings where we'd listen to the radio, you know, try to get the updates, and we'd all share this in reach to communicate with with loved ones. And so that I remember that that phase of, you know, immediately after the storm, before I was able to understand the gravity of what had happened as being really positive, yeah. And then, you know, at a certain point we, we evacuated my wife's dad, who had just finished open heart surgery, down to Atlanta, and when we got far enough away to start getting cell service again, and sort of starting to see those messages come in and see the images of of the of the flooding, and yeah, I also had a doom scroll. They. There, but, but really wasn't able to soak it all in and, and, you know, I'd say, still am not able to soak it all in completely. Speaker 1 10:07 Yeah, I feel like some at some point, that lack of communication is sort of what really brought folks together. You know, we had to be outside. We had to be connecting with neighbors, you know, in person, face to face, just to get information and share and comfort each other. And, you know, I am a local scout leader. And so of course, you know, scouts are sort of in that chain of command on first responders. And so we were doing a lot of volunteer activities initially. And you know, I asked the scouts to reflect on, you know, providing that level of service, and what they saw what they experienced, and I think they were all really struck and touched by communities coming together to support each other. You know, it's interesting. Within the first few days, you know, I was scrambling to get out find out where I could be most useful, and they were swelling with volunteers and supplies. And so the response, you know, once we moved out of kind of that crisis rescue phase, which went on in some places for a week or more. It was really about just getting people propped back up, getting supplies. Losing water was a big, a big factor, the amount of rain that we experienced in flooding, and that the damage done to the water system was a big hurdle that we had to overcome. But I do feel like people really rose to the moment, even no matter how unprecedented and challenging it was. It was, it was reassuring to see that at our worst times, people really do come together and show up for one Bill Hodge 11:33 another. My wife and I got to experience that when we lived in Jackson, Tennessee, lived in West Tennessee with a pair of tornadoes on, I think January 29 of 1999 and the Yeah, the beauty of communities coming together comes out of that darkness of the tragedy. And it was kind of one of those moments for me to change my life, frankly, and obviously, people's lives have been changed by Helene in ways that are horrific and and also life altering for the rest of their lives. But, but the beauty of sort of the response, where do we think the community is now several months removed? Like, what's the what's the economics of the of Asheville and the Greater Western North Carolina area? How are communities doing? Joshua, maybe start with you. Speaker 2 12:24 In a lot of communities, there's been tremendous progress. I'd like point to Marshall on the French Broad that had its flood of record, and there was water up into the first floor of the courthouse, and many businesses completely flooded, many homes flooded. And Marshall has really banded together and come back. Civil society throughout the hurricane response has really been impressive. Like the power of people to come together and help one another and to work together has been amazing. On the other hand, like unemployment numbers for the region are way, way up. Some counties like, I think Buncombe County, where Asheville is, has 10 or 12% unemployment right now, which is pretty high, and the housing situation is dire. We already had a huge housing crisis because of an affordability crisis. Same thing people are experiencing nationwide, but western North Carolina has become super desirable, and it's incredibly acute here, because wages are pretty low and housing costs are pretty high, and that continues to be a really big problem in Asheville and in the surrounding counties, and it's one of the really frustrating things about hurricane response, when you see there being a lot of money for some things like cutting trees off of river banks that don't need to be cut, compared to putting people in homes, which there doesn't seem to be a lot of money around for getting people into homes Speaker 1 13:41 and being able to facilitate getting people out of these high risk areas. You know, one of the kind of challenging things about the circumstances is, you know, as Josh mentions, with the the high property values, it oftentimes forces development into areas which are much more vulnerable. So you know how we rebuild, build back better provide that housing, but also that support to get people out of these vulnerable spaces. You know, it's really troubling to see that even some of the maps that FEMA was using to determine the extent of the disaster were completely out of step with what we experienced. So now you have people who are literally living in a new reality, a new flood zone, which isn't even on the book, so to speak. So it's going to take quite some time to, I think, get those things balanced out again. Well, Bill Hodge 14:28 we've started with the personal stories, a little bit about communities. I mean, obviously, with the focus of the wild idea being this intersection of human nature and wild nature, let's kind of still talk about communities, but let's also pull it into into the natural world. Obviously, a hurricane is a form of a natural disturbance, for those of us who work in this world, maybe for the public. You know, we we think about ecosystems function with disturbance, whether that's fire or tornadoes or floods or hurricanes. Uh, kind of the scale here was pretty extraordinary, but it seems like the scale is changing even more by the response to the natural disturbance. Sam, would you say that that's fair? Speaker 3 15:12 Yeah. I mean, I just speak from my personal experience is seeing the initial damage, like seeing the the trees down on elk mountain right? Like, just, just laid waste to by the storm. Like, all the trees in an area just falling over on top of each other, like that was really hard at first. Like, these are places that I know really well. Like, I've seen them, I've been in them, you know, hundreds of times and like, so seeing them damaged like that was really hard, and it was a lot of work personally for me, to sort of contextualize that as part of a bigger, longer time frame where disturbance is a natural part of our landscape. And, you know, there's potential for these things to come back better in the future or stronger, you know, like, with more diversity and resilience, and then I think, you know, sort of doing that work, and then seeing this insult piled on to injury with a response that doesn't, that doesn't fit the need, has been really hard. Bill Hodge 16:20 Yeah, I mean, Josh just alluded to it, right? It's people are using the moment to do things, whether it's just purely for economic gain or because they they're seizing the moment, but like, we're not. We're not even getting people back in houses, while we're doing even more damage to the natural world. You know, Ben, your work with defenders, you know, protecting a lot of wildlife, but one that I think we all value highly, the the hell Bender, yeah. I mean, they're, they're diving into river beds with heavy machinery to cut trees that don't need to be cut down, right? I mean, Speaker 1 16:50 yeah, it's, it's been, it's been shocking to witness. I think it's been really for those of us who work in the advocacy space or collaborate a lot with various agencies, federal and state, to ensure these special places are conserved. I think we're we've all been caught a little bit flat footed and unprepared for what this response would bring, particularly into our waterways and streams. You know, Hellbenders are a good species to think about. They're fully aquatic, you know, and they are highly imperiled due to loss of connectivity in the river ways, ongoing pollution problems and destruction of habitat, which, again, this quote, unquote cleanup effort is directly impacting. So you know, Hellbenders are quite resilient, and they're much beloved in our communities, and folks want to support and help them. And, you know, one of the interesting things, you know, in the aftermath of the storm, many of us kind of got our heads together to talk about what's next, particularly as we try to, you know, do some crisis intervention with species like Hellbenders. And one of the researchers that was a part of this conversation shared with us, you know, Josh brings back the little tidbit about the storms at 04 which is also widespread flooding in the region, and the Hellbenders held on really well in certain places. So I think we're quite hopeful that they're still holding on, particularly in areas where they had those strongholds. But you know, so much of what we have to get organized for is getting out there, looking at the habitat, doing the inventories, doing the surveys, and that's, you know, will happen this summer, and it's going to happen, you know, after we've seen some of this destruction take place, and I worry more about species that can't move around as much, particularly our mussels. That's one that has a really concerned impacts to mussels, which are also very imperiled and very important to maintaining the health and integrity of our waterways, Speaker 2 18:46 and to paint a picture of what's going on, we have 30 ton pieces of equipment using rivers and streams as highways, driving up and down the stream and pulling wood and trees off of stream banks, supposedly in the name of disaster recovery, and some of it was needed. I mean, there were definitely lots of cars and pieces of houses and various large pieces of trash that need to be removed from streams. What's happening, though, is really using streams as sort of a money mind for out of area contractors that kind of specialize in these disasters as a way to make a lot of money. Bill Hodge 19:18 This new version of Doom scrolling for me has been like when I think about the Hellbender. And for our audience who don't know what the Hellbender is, it is a salamander. If you ever want to watch a great documentary on I think it's called last dragon. This is really good about the Hellbender, but it is a rather large Salamander. What then they get to, what two, yeah, Speaker 1 19:38 upwards of two feet. And they're the largest, second largest salamander in the world, and largest one here in North America. Bill Hodge 19:45 But they I, when I watched the storm hit, I was thinking about all those river beds being scoured by the floods, never dreaming that. Now I'm watching videos, as Josh just alluded to, of these, you know, five ton earth movers going up and down river beds. To you. Uh, maybe do necessary work. But in a lot of times it sounds like doing make work. Let's make money off a disaster kind of work. And it's just kind of totally disheartening that that this disaster has also turned into that it's turned into the beautiful moments of community coming together. Sam, you gave the example of your neighborhood working together, making sure everybody had water. But now, now we're now, we're turning into the dark side of the stuff and and it sounds like support for the community is also starting to pull out now, right? Like the actual human support is starting to evaporate, with FEMA being pulled out and some of the some of that work, but I guess I'm a zoom out. Time wise. I haven't been back in the southern apps long enough to see the scale. But like, Can any of you guys speak to? Like, the scale of the volume of trees that we've lost? Like, like, the new range of disturbance has to completely change some of these forests. And it also seems like it was very the storm had impacts in certain geographic area, like, very micro geographic areas, right? Like, we're sitting here on the Davidson River, on the Pisgah, I don't think this flooded, like, like the south tow, or, you know, the Swannanoa, right? I mean, yeah, so, but is that also true with where we lost forest? Who is that sort of in pieces? Speaker 2 21:17 It's fairly concentrated. There are, like, isolated, random places that lost trees. But there was really a band of heaviest impact that was north and east of Asheville, from the wind even, you know, downtown Asheville, not much. Where I live in West Asheville, very little wind damage. But if you get into Swannanoa and Black Mountain, tremendous wind damage. And north of there, into Yancey County, and especially Mitchell County, 1000s and 1000s of acres have blown down trees, particularly on ridges with a South aspect, or East aspect, which was the direction the storm and the winds were coming from. So those ridges that faced the full Brun to the storm really got hammered. And then there were some odd places, like elk mountain that doesn't fit that description, which was on the west side of a ridge, but just happened to have two gaps in the craggy mountains with the storm was funneling through, is what it looks like, and just pushing a river of wind at this ridge, and hundreds of acres of forest just got flattened in places like that. So in general, yeah, there's a pattern, but then there's kind of a randomness to the storm that you kind of have to put together from the forensics of what happened. You know, Bill Hodge 22:22 it was so, am I right? It was a concentration of obviously very high winds, like, still hurricane force winds, 350 miles inland, but also totally saturated soils, right? Yeah? Like, absolutely, it wasn't just like the 24 I know the example I've heard of, like 24 inches of rain and a limited time. I mean, it had been like inches of rain before that even right? That's Speaker 2 22:42 right. And like the heaviest rains before the storm fell north and east of Asheville, the heaviest rains during the storm fell east of Asheville, and then those winds were also on that same path. So that that band that's like 50 miles wide, that basically goes from the South Carolina State Line up into Tennessee is where the heaviest impacts were concentrated throughout the storm, Speaker 3 23:03 and the landslides, is something we haven't mentioned yet, but there are 1000s of landslides, at least a couple 1000 really large ones, and then, you know, account literally countless numbers of landslides that are smaller, scattered throughout the woods with, you know, as a result of all that rain, the there are lots of places that feel basically like they did last spring, the spring before that, you know. So it's, it's widespread, but it's not everywhere. Bill Hodge 23:35 Yeah. So it's, I imagine that sort of, for some people, life almost feels normal again, but for other people, it's never gonna feel normal again. Yeah. Speaker 1 23:42 I mean, there's a deep sense of loss, and the road to travel for recovery is a lot longer for some, you know, the landslides were so numerous that they actually classified it as a geologic event, you know, the amount of soil and just that that moved during this event, Speaker 2 24:00 we lost a tremendous amount of oak trees during the storm, because oak trees hold onto their leaves so tightly, and they acted like, yeah, like sails, and just blew over. And so this is really selectively removing some of the trees that are the most valuable in the forest, ecologically, in a lot of ways. Bill Hodge 24:16 How have the federal land managers responded? I know there's been a rush for harvest timber sales, basically harvesting the logs that were brought down. You know, have they been staying within the bounds? I'm Sam, I'm looking at you have, I mean, are they staying within the corridor that we can accept, or are they sort of starting to drift? Speaker 3 24:36 There's a lot of similarity between the sort of river debris cleanup, and then the, you know, the push to do salvage logging, right? Like there's a lot of money that's been made available for the the agencies involved, and there's a pressure to spend it quickly, to show that we're doing something. And I think there's some opportunism. And so. Of like, Where can we go? Where can we do something? And we're seeing that with salvage logging too. You know, we're seeing some, some really thoughtful projects, like, where could salvage logging potentially reduce risk to communities? How would we do it if we wanted it to reduce risk of, say, wildfire in the future? Like, how would we, you know, use salvage to get fuels out of the woods that would really, actually protect a community? And then we're just seeing some really dumb stuff. So logging in areas where it's not gonna, it's not close to a community, it's just like a polygon out in the middle of the woods that's not gonna do any good. So we're gonna build a road into it. We're gonna, you know, I create vectors for invasive species and make things worse than they were when we found them, or worse than they were after the storm, for really no good reason. Bill Hodge 25:55 Well, that goes to sort of stepping back before the storm, and just sort of maybe where I want to go with the conversation now is to talk about the state of Appalachia in general. You know, sort of talked about these pretty acute impacts from Helene, but like, what's the state of the Appalachian forest? Josh, maybe I'll start with you. What do you think beyond obviously, these specific impacts from Helene, where are we forest health wise, Speaker 2 26:23 how big do you want me to talk as far as Appalachian forest? You want me to talk up into West Virginia? Bill Hodge 26:27 Yeah, sure. I mean, I think, I think people, yeah. I mean, let's talk about the whole landscape, you know? Speaker 2 26:31 Yeah. Well, I mean, I think the Appalachian forest are one of the most resilient forests on the world. They're a temperate hardwood forest. They get a lot of rain in general, summer rain. Have moderate temperatures. They are far, far enough south that they were never glaciated by glaciers and the Pleistocene, and that means that they were a refuge for all sorts of species during the Pleistocene and other climate change events. So I think there's something deeply comforting about the Appalachians that feels like home to a lot of people, because they have been a refuge, not just for lots of species, but for people who wanted to hide out and get away from, say, an oppressive power. If you're a Scotch Irish settler trying to get away from the English king, this is where people came. And if you're a Cherokee person who lived here for 1000s of years, you were able to hide out here, even under tremendous pressure from this oppressive government that was trying to kick you out. And the Appalachians in mountain ranges in general, but particularly the Appalachians have that kind of refuge feel. And we, you know this range was devastated by industrial logging between, say, 1880 and 1920 probably 80 to 90% of the forest were logged around here. And despite that, they've come back. And a lot of it was due to the foresight of our ancestors, who created national forest and national parks. And so today, you know the southern Blue Ridge, where we are right now, it was, it was 50% forested in 1940 it's 80% forested today. It's really come back, and in places that have had a continuous legacy of forest, even if they were cut and never converted to agriculture, you have tremendous ecological integrity and quality that is really noteworthy. And the on the flip side of that tremendous integrity, you have increasing human population, increasing development pressure. You've got 100 years of fire exclusion and suppression in a landscape that traditionally had it. In addition to those other threats, we have a new threat of non native invasive species, pathogens like chestnut blight, emerald ash borer beetle, hemlock wooly adelgid, that are taking out kind of Keystone tree species and non native invasive plants that are converting native vegetation into non native vegetation. So while this is a super resilient area, we do have our trials and tribulations and and you know, the things we are lacking are things like fire, natural flood regimes. We've got fauna that's been extirpated, like elk, wolves, large cats, and we're lacking a lot of connectivity. We have a lot of problems with connectivity in the natural wild world. Speaker 1 29:17 Yeah, I think that's a that's a big one. I'm glad you mentioned connectivity, Josh, because, you know, you're absolutely right, these places are really a refuge and a stronghold for resilient forest ecosystems. And we think about the biodiversity, you know, obviously, we're in one of the biodiversity hotspots on the globe, and the problem we have is that many of these species are still hanging on, but barely hanging on, and when the magnitude of threat increases, we've really got to do what we can to secure, conserve and help restore and recover these habitats that are so essential for the long term sustainability of a number of these species. It depend on this place. It Bill Hodge 30:01 seems like we have to do it in a way that we just we try to sustain as many of those species, like I know from all of our collective work, sometimes, some people in this landscape get focused only on the species that they care about, and therefore they only want to see the habitat for that species, and not recognize the mosaic of of not only species, but the mosaic of habitats that those species require and that we can get there if we work at it long enough and hard enough, one thing I just hit me yesterday like a lightning bolt, and I've been gone for six years, so I wasn't here for Helene moved about as far away from here, but I'm a child of Appalachia. I forgot just how intimate This place feels. I live in a landscape that doesn't feel into it's big and wide and, you know, valleys that are 40 miles wide and that sort of thing, but, but I think that intimacy allows the ability to hide some of the challenges that exist honestly, like you just see these beautiful forested hills and the blue smoke and and meanwhile, there's obviously problems within communities, but there's now ecological problems and that we've all worked on, you know, we have a net, you know, we have a keystone national park here, and Great Smoky Mountain National Park, but that park is surrounded by the nanahala Pisgah National Forest, the Cherokee National Forest, the Chattahoochee County In Georgia, the George Washington, Jefferson in Virginia, you know Josh talked about all the way up into West Virginia, the Monongahela. We're also in an era where the Forest Service's mission is being, let's just say, toyed with and converted and changed. But we are already had some challenges here with finding the right consensus. I'll use the term right consensus. That's a loaded way to put it, but around making sure that we're stewarding these forests towards you know, as Josh alluded to, sort of, they've been resilient, but they've had a lot of loss, losing chestnuts and other species. But where are we with the administration of the National Forest and and, I guess the park too. Speaker 3 32:03 Yeah, I think really, you have to start well before the current administration to understand where things are at with the Forest Service right now, locally or nationally, the in the in the east, the Forest Service for a long time, for you know, well over a decade has been focused on logging for early successional habitat creation, above really, any other priority. There was a period of time after, you know, the so called timber wars, where the Forest Service really realized that it had to do both, right. It had to like, do timber, but it also had to do ecological restoration. It had to do protection, and it realized it wasn't well equipped to do that on its own, and it started looking to the public for help. Started looking to collaborative groups to come together, to bring different viewpoints together and figure out, like, what's the best way for us to do the highest priority work, right? That period I, you know, in pockets, is still that is still a strong cultural piece of who the Forest Service is. But overall, that period is over. You know, we're seeing the Forest Service move away from collaboration and sort of pull back into its own kind of silo and try to do what it thinks is right without the benefit of public input. So I think, like, that's our biggest challenge right now, and the and that existed before the new administration that existed, yeah, that's been a long trend before the new administration. I will say, you know, it really picked up about eight years ago. So, you know, Bill Hodge 33:45 first, yeah, first Trump administration, right? Speaker 3 33:48 But what we've got right now is a tremendous amount of pressure to get the cut out. And we've got, you know, in some places we've got forest plans that are fairly protective, and in some places we've got forest plans that are gonna allow them to do a lot of bad stuff that is gonna hurt these forests. Speaker 1 34:05 I think one of the other dynamics that we're sort of enduring right now is this truly just cruel assault on the federal workforce, and that's sort of, I think, forcing some of this backing ourselves to a corner away from collaboration and towards just getting work done. And you know, in this moment, they have probably a higher responsibility and calling they've ever had to help steward these places, and yet they're simultaneously being asked to do more nefarious things with fewer people, less expertise, less oversight and less public engagement. So we're really moving away from really honoring what these resource agencies were established to do, and that was to secure these lands for the public trust and the public good. Some for some reason, we're stepping away from that. And that's that's really problematic. We've already seen the reduction in force have truly outsized impacts to our parks, to our forest. You know, you talk about the intimacy of this place, and I think a big part of that, too, is there's a real cultural intimacy. You know, a huge amount of the public connects with these places, values these places, and they depend and rely, whether they know it or not, on agencies to help take care of the places they love, right? Bill Hodge 35:24 Yeah. And now we have, we not only have that reduction in workforce, and I don't think we're done seeing where all that's going to go, but now we're having these mandates for increased timber targets, decreased protections for old growth, which is something I know all four of us have been concerned about, which is hanging on to the vestiges of old growth that we have in the southern Appalachians. I actually think we have so little left. But one opportunity we do have here is we have forests on their way to being old growth, right? So there's that cultivation and recruitment of future old growth. And all of us, but you three in particular have done so much work on trying to stand that up, like, how do we? How do we with you guys? Had to withstand Helene now, how do we withstand this storm? Because it it feels like um, and again, these forests are resilient. They'll come back, but we may not see it in our lifetime. If, if we continue to see this wholesale assault on on forests under the guise of early successional habitat, or whatever it Speaker 3 36:27 might be, you know, in the same way the Josh talked about the, you know, the productivity and the growing season rains in the southern Appalachians, the things that make the forest themselves resilient, like we have, there are a lot of fundamentals that make us resilient as a community of people who want to protect and take care of those for us. And one is just that the people in this region love our public lands full stop, right? So I think you know the like when people start to feel cut out of the decision making process, which is absolutely the plan right now, you know, digress to talk about that just for a second. You know, Ben mentioned this, but there, there is basically a three legged stool that the this administration has sort of planned for our public lands. One is to cut the staff. The other is to the, you know, the second piece of that is to produce more produce, more, produce more timber, produce more oil and gas, produce more minerals, right? And you can't do those unless you're willing to take some serious shortcuts. And so that's the third leg of that stool. Is shortcuts, and one is to cut out the public from the process Exactly. Cut out internal environmental review too, though, like, you know, like not having that, those internal checks within the agencies and between the agencies, but also cutting out the public, cutting out judicial review is a really important one, like making sure that the public can't actually stop a bad project, even if they are organized against it. So those, those things are definitely problematic, but when people start to feel that they're going to stand up and whether that finds an outlet, through the legal process or through the political process, people are going to take back control over these lands? Bill Hodge 38:09 Well, one big driver for the economy for this part of the world is tourism too, right? And they don't come to see clear cuts. They come to see these beautiful forests, whether the public recognizes whether it's first growth, second growth, old growth, whatever. They don't come to see clear cuts, and they also come because they can hike into a beautiful waterfall. I'm going to assume that the recreation infrastructure here has taken a pretty tremendous hit as well from the storm, but is now going to take it from this reduction of workforce. And I can imagine that's going to resonate in communities too, because we'll see you were talking about high unemployment numbers, Josh, I can imagine that's going to get better if we start to lose what I know is a key driver for all of Western North Carolina and Appalachia in general. Speaker 2 38:57 Yeah, no, it's it's not helping to reduce the federal workforces around here. And you know, in some communities, actually, it's a decent amount of the jobs you know, particularly some of the rural communities you know, between and I'm not just talking about the Forest Service, the Park Service here, but you know, like the VA is taking a big hit, and it looks like the Postal Service good too. So, yeah, it's really setting us up for a rough economic situation. And what we're also seeing in some of these salvage projects is not a lot of thought about the tourism impact of where salvage is occurring, for example, right on top of the Appalachian Trail, right in one case, and closing the Appalachian Trail or rerouting it for months, which is, as everybody knows, a very famous and popular trail. So that's where I see this ongoing impact to the recreation economy being is kind of that, that lack of multiple perspectives having a say in where timbering happens. I think you're gonna see timbering happened in some places that isn't very well thought out. And there will be. Recreational and tourism impacts to that. Bill Hodge 40:03 Am I right? To all, to at least two of you, the ecologist sitting here, the ecology is shifting pretty dramatically here as well. Right? We just had fire at a time of year that it was more intense than I remember from my time here. I mean, am I right? Does it feels like the the climate change component to what's going on in this landscape is also like picking up pace. Is that fair to say? Speaker 2 40:27 Yeah, I think it's totally fair to say. I think, you know, like I was going on about we are in this resilient place that seems so protected from natural disasters, but unfortunately, I think global warming is is outrunning the natural capacity of this place to be buffered. And so yeah, in March, we had one of the driest marches on record. We had a very warm March. We had relative humidity values getting into the teens or even single digits. That's Western. That's Western breaking records. And winds multiple days with sustained winds, 2030, miles per hour. And so when you have conditions like that, you have wildfire, there's absolutely nothing you can do about Bill Hodge 41:02 it. You can do about it. Yeah? I mean, it just feels like it's changed. Everywhere is changing. I obviously live in a landscape where fire is just part of everyday life in the summertime, but to think about it being part of Appalachian life in March feels incredibly out of whack. Speaker 2 41:17 Yeah. Well, it does partly, but I do want to say that that like fire in March and April was always part of Appalachian life we live. Happened to grow up in this time where we were putting all the fires out, and global warming is just getting to the point where we can put them all out. And I think it was traditionally fairly natural to have fire in that season. The two natural fire seasons here are generally like spring and fall, okay, yeah, that's when when the leaves are off the trees and the humidity goes down. That's when we have fires. Speaker 1 41:44 Yeah, I think fundamentally, what we're what we're seeing, and what we've got to really act quickly to get a handle on is sort of this shifting baseline of where our local ecology is moving, what key indicators will allow us to really adapt and change to the changing circumstances. You know, one of the things we are committed to at Defenders of Wildlife is working with our agency partners to sort of maintain data sets for indicator species. You mentioned Hellbenders. We go out every season to survey for those. Obviously, this year we'll get a very stark contrast between pre and post Helene. The same is true for our migratory song birds. You know, one of the things I worry about is many of our migratory songbirds move here in the spring and summer for their breeding season. They key in on specific habitat types and areas they return to year after year, and some of those places, the entire canopy has been wiped out. So how are the avian communities going to be responding again? I think what's going to be changed? To be challenging is, even as we learn how things are changing and develop ideas and plans on how to respond, are we going to be equipped with the tools, the resources and really a system of agencies that's set up to continue to help lead in that direction? And unfortunately, we seem to be really out of sync. We've got magnifying threats shifting, you know, shifting this concept of what's normal, and then agencies who are really no longer as much in the driver's seats that need to be to respond to these situations. Speaker 3 43:15 Yeah, I'd agree with that. And, you know, it's notable that we're sitting here talking about this at a time when the you know, all of our phones are blowing up with news about the reconciliation package, right? Like, what is what? Where is Congress headed? And what we're seeing is in like, an unprecedented pressure on our land management agencies, through executive order, through congressional action, to pick up the pace of drill, drill, drill, and timber, timber, timber, right? And, you know, I think that again, like those are trends that in the East we've been dealing with for a while now, but the the pressure is just picking up more than ever. And so we've the nanahala Pis forest plan. You know, I'm gonna, I'll break the seal. Please. Bill Hodge 43:58 Go ahead. Go ahead. Let's talk about the nahila. So the Nana Halo Pisgah is a sort of used to be two separate national forests to actually now part of four national forests managed together in North Carolina, but surrounding the eastern flank of great smoking Mountain National Park and national forest of 1.2 million acres, and had a management plan come out that we were all part of trying to help form that. So please break the seal, Sam. Let's talk about the Daniel Episcopal plan. Speaker 3 44:27 Yeah, I'll just zero in on one issue that's relevant to what Josh and Ben are talking about the you know. So the plan that we got, not the plan that we wanted, but the plan that we got anticipated there, that there would be practically zero natural disturbance in the future that the Forest Service said, like we we need natural disturbance on this landscape. It is fire suppressed. It's, you know, it hasn't had the kind of natural disturbance in the past that we would expect. But we're not going to get it in the future. You know, we're just going to stick our head in the sand and pretend that climate change isn't happening. I. So we're gonna have to log, log, log, log. In order to get the mimic exactly to we got to replace that missing natural disturbance. And so the, you know, just give, you know, one number that should make this really clear, like so the Forest Service predicted, after incredible pressure from the scientific and stakeholder communities to get realistic about natural disturbance. Predicted that there would be 180 acres a year over time of on average, of of natural disturbance on that 1.2 million acres, on a 1.2 million acre forest. And you know, Hurricane Helene brought what 170,000 acres in a single day, right? And the wildfires that I think we'll expect to see as as in, you know, sequelae of the that debris on the ground are going to bring us 1000s of acres more just in the next few years. It's, you know, it really just shows just how incredibly myopic the Forest Service was about this issue. And you know, I don't attribute that to bad faith, but it was with the pressure on them to produce timber from all these different sources. You know, it was, it would have been really inconvenient for them to see anything else, to see the possibility that, so they saw what they needed to see and not what was in front of them. And here we are, you know, living with the results of that where the forest plan itself didn't anticipate this. We weren't prepared for the storm. We weren't prepared for what we would need to do after it. The you know, in conversations with the Fish and Wildlife Service before the storm, they never thought about what storm damage and salvage harvest would mean for, say, rare and endangered bat species, right? Nobody ever talked about that. We just didn't like it was not on their minds. They didn't listen when we said that. That was a real possibility. And so here we are, and we've got, you know, chainsaws are, are Bren up right now to cut down, to cut down forests that have been damaged by Helene, and we don't know what that means, right? Bill Hodge 47:03 We're not waiting long enough. I mean, I'm reminded of a I think it was Hurricane Irma, maybe, that, you know, people still didn't have power back on, and we were fighting over chainsaws in the National Forest, in that case, to open up a resource like the Appalachian Trail, like we don't give ourselves enough time to say, Oh, wow, this is entirely different than what our plan for the nanny health is anticipated. We're just going to jump in. And I think we're all seeing also the example of disasters are often followed by money. There's an awful lot of money, and people are trying to find a way to spend to take advantage of that money. Whether it's the right way or not, seems to not matter at this point, this has been heavy, so I'm gonna try to light it up a little bit. I think a shared friend of all of ours, Dr drew Lanham, has a book called Joy is the justice we give ourselves. Like what does give you joy in moving forward, or at least the you can see joy is that light at the end of the tunnel? Ben, I'll start with you. Oh, great. Speaker 1 48:05 Yeah. No, it's an important question. Bill, it's one I try to ask myself and sort of do a sort of mental health inventory every day of sort of, you know what I'm going to put my energy into that's going to bring me enough joy to sustain the type of effort we're facing. Because all of us that do this work, I think, naturally have a resilience, and we're very focused and take very principled stands. And so I think in many ways, that has the effect of helping keep us focused and motivated, but it also means we're living with the reality and the challenges and the threats in real time. But I mean to get to the core of your question, I think what brings me joy is continuing to experience these places that are beloved, sharing them with others, making it a part of our collective consciousness. And I think another thing I take this comes full circle. Where we started the conversation with Helene, is reconnecting with people face to face in community. I think what we've learned and through Helene and what we're learning through this very challenging moment with the federal government, is that if things are gonna change, it's gonna have to change locally. It's got to change in communities. So being organized, being engaged, having those conversations, is really important, and that brings me a lot of hope. Is when I go into rooms of people, many of whom are strangers, but we have a common interest in a shared place that we care about, and seeing other people get motivated to do something, to take action, to speak up for these places. You know, I always sort of talk to folks about how, in my view, public lands really represent the best of what's possible in democracy, and, you know, this idea of the commons and our shared spaces and how we make decisions about that. And I think now it's more important than ever to i. Re establish those values for why we have established these places, why they're important, why we have an endangered species act, why we have a National Environmental Policy Act, these things matter. I've also often said that I think one of the reasons why some of this activity, that's been this assault in the federal government has been so effective, if not simply because it's been Craven and ham fisted, but is, I don't think a lot of people really fully understand what the federal government provides to them day to day, but I think public lands represent a really good touchstone for that, and I think that's a great place to start a conversation. So that brings me joy that our public lands will be here and we can reconnect to them and make sure they're on the right path for sustainable future. Sam, Unknown Speaker 50:48 I agree with Ben. He Bill Hodge 50:50 didn't want to go first. Anders Reynolds 50:53 Yeah, wow. I mean, I'll, Speaker 3 50:55 you know, I'll share something a little simpler and more personal. We I was out taking a walk in Bent Creek part of the Pisgah National Forest, not a couple weeks ago. And I saw a landslide, kind of, up in a cove off the trail, and wandered up to it just to see, you know, how how bad it had been like, how bad that particular one was, and was it impacting the creek. And as I found a place to sit like right next to it and have a snack. I saw in the in the in the spill, in the in that mineral soil, I saw cohosh, Trillium, and even some blood root poking up. And that was, that was hope for me. You know, I love the spring here. And, you know, I feel, I feel the spring here. I think like the seeing that, like, you know, the sunshine is still pulling water out of the ground, through these plants bodies, you know. And I think in the same way, like our collective love for these places is pulling the work through our boots and through our hands, and we're gonna, you know, we're gonna take care of these places come what may Bill Hodge 52:12 life. Life persists, right? Josh, Speaker 2 52:16 yeah, what brings me joy is in this context, in particular, just being connected to this place, connected to the people here, and seeing another spring emerge all around us, and having reverence for life and and I find a lot of meaning and joy in that, and find a lot of meaning and joy in Little kids first time getting in the creek, splashing around, first time catching a little Toad, or first time they catch a fish, good stuff. Yeah. Bill Hodge 52:52 Well, thanks guys for doing this today. And I guess I'll end with my own personal choice that we worked around sirens. We worked around loud motors going by, and we got to wrap up this section on joy while listening to incredible birdsong all around us here on the Davidson river on the Pisgah National Forest. And guys, so good to see you again. It's been too long. Unknown Speaker 53:13 Absolutely thank you, Bill. Speaker 2 53:14 Really appreciate it. You and Anders are giving me a lot of joy with this podcast. Yeah, I love you, Bill, Bill Hodge 53:18 thanks, guys. A few days after our conversation on the Davidson River, I caught up with Joe Gottesman in Asheville about her perspective. Talk about going through the storm yourself personally. What was you know, where were you? What was the experience like? Because obviously, it sort of happened over time. It also happened in a compressed timeframe. So what was your experience with the storm itself? Speaker 4 53:39 Yeah, sure. So I was at home on horse fork mountain in Haywood County, North Carolina, which is, you know, all the water that flows by us, we're pretty high up at three, 500 feet. And so all the water that flows by us goes right into liner Creek and then in the Pigeon River, which of course, took out interstate 40, and so I got to see a lot of that water on its way down the mountain. We luckily just lost some trees up at our place. We had a block culvert that pretty much took out our road for our whole community. And so neighbors came together. It took a few days to to fix that and to be able to get out. And just like so many folks, we had no power for about 1011, days, we have spring water gravity fed. So we had water, thankfully, but no communication, and we were running a inverter off our car batteries on an on a schedule to keep our fridge and freezers operational. So also, you know, really grateful we didn't lose any food. But it was, of course, pretty amazing, you know, especially as the rest of the world knew what happened and we. We did not communication out was, was pretty, pretty few and far between. But we were able to get out after a few days, checked on our other place in town, which was also fine, and it really, you know, we knew, of course, like you know, a lot of others in the region, it was up to us, you know, to take care of our roads and our infrastructure. And so we had some landslides on the you know, the state maintained, county maintained roads to the top of the mountain, so neighbors with tractors scraped the roads. We rebuilt, you know, our roads back in, in our holler and and then it was, it was just trying to find out, you know, trying to get information, and just that, checking in with people. So the slow trickle of who's Okay, who needs support, who's not okay. And in some ways, it felt like covid all over again. You know, we had no school for a month, and so my boys and Oren and I were just home trying to piecemeal together. TWS gave me a star link, and so I was after a number of weeks, maybe bad. After a month, I was able to actually have solid, solid internet connectivity and just, you know, the recognition of how, how heavily hit the area was, You know, volunteering and doing what we could, making donations, you know, everyone's GoFundMe, hearing unbelievable stories. And in the couple of months after once, I kind of was able to raise my head and realize, like, we're okay, what can we do? I used some connections, you know, through the outdoor industry and through work to to strike up a like an outdoor winter gear donation effort, Unknown Speaker 57:11 the wonders for winter weather, right? So, you Speaker 4 57:14 know, Appalachia is cold and damp to begin with, and people don't often think of a hurricane is coming through the mountains, and so just that, that thought of like winter is coming and a lot of people are going to be cold, mold is growing. People don't have adequate heat. So there were so many different, you know, efforts, you know, where, like, where to plug in to make the most impact and to do good in a way that doesn't pull on people you know to be additive, the wonderful folks at Eno donated a bunch of warehouse space for me, and I worked with the North Carolina Outdoor Recreation coalition to solicit whatever we could from groups regionally, nationally, And so had about 15,000 items donated, all, you know, all new, pretty good quality stuff. And so I worked to not just unload things on other groups, because nobody had storage space. And so you had to kind of disseminate things right when they can go to people who needed them. So from November to March, really, I worked with dozens, probably, probably about two dozen local groups who are just doing amazing like work at the community level, and got whatever I had to people. And so that was, you know, just a little bit. And I'm grateful because it got me to different parts of our region, and it got me really seeing with my own eyes of some of that impact. Bill Hodge 58:50 Yeah. It's, I mean, sort of a universal theme that sometimes, out of these darkest moments, some of the most beautiful stories come and that sounds like one of those stories to me. Yeah. So I want to ask you, what do you what do you what do you think the state of the community is today, like, you know, and also going back to your answer about what, how you went through it literally, sort of in the dark. I think I knew more what was happening in Asheville, as I've had these conversations since I knew what was going on in Asheville from Montana than my friends in Asheville did, because you guys were without power, without connectivity. And you could did just such a great job there of explaining sort of, sort of how the sort of the progression of coming out of that timeline. But where do you think we are in that timeline now for the community? Speaker 4 59:33 Well, you know, there, there are so many different communities, and it was amazing to see the level of impact to some and not others, you know. And I think the storm really broke open a lot of the inequalities across the communities, you know, looking at it from like a, you know, community organizing, or like social services lens the folks that, um, you know, we're already in in need. The time of the hurricane, are in an even, you know, greater need. It really kind of blew the door open on that. And who gets to make decisions, you know, to where money flows, you know, who are the gatekeepers of funding and who can maybe block really great grassroots level solutions, you know, from the people that are impacted of kind of rising up to policy. And so I think the state of the community, kind of writ large across western North Carolina, folks are doing the best they can. You know, I think there's been a lot of hope. And, of course, neighbors helping neighbors. You know, people really remember how that feels. And so there are new networks that are emerging. We're still waiting for a lot of the federal funding to trickle through the state. You know, looking at the the priorities of our elected officials right now. You know, I think it still remains to be seen. But my my hope is that this year, you know, recovery is not just asking people to come and spend money here, which is very important. I hope that we are going to see some real, real support through the General Assembly, like, I think we will in North Carolina, and we, we need, we just need to be learning about each other's success stories. You know, for that, the inspiration, the motivation and the knowledge that that these things really are are happening. You know, we need to know and have the light shined on what is what's not working and what is working. Bill Hodge 1:01:49 So within the those of us who work in the public land space, we talk about natural disturbance. Natural disturbances, obviously, a is a natural part of the natural world. It happens. The scale of this natural disturbance is kind of, you don't, as you said earlier, you don't often think of hurricanes in the mountains. Though we've certainly have had floods here in western North Carolina from hurricanes before, but the winds were still persistent. The volume of rain was sort of beyond, you know, beyond the 500 year flood even, right? Like, what do you think the state of the natural world is, the function, the functioning of the ecosystems? Because, as you, as you said about the communities, it didn't impact everything, or it didn't, certainly didn't impact everything equally. Right? Some ridges, you could look and you go, nothing's changed here. But if you go to a different Ridge, every trees laying on the ground, right? So how do you feel? Sort of the state of the natural world is in western North Carolina right now. It's a tough question. I know, Speaker 4 1:02:49 yes, no, it's a tough question. You know, the thing that I think has been most you know, on people's minds are waterways, you know, and the kind of the permanent changes that we've seen to the waterways and riparian areas being scraped clean, you know, the course of waterways being shifted. A lot of lot of folks are really thinking about restoration of those riparian areas and how, how, how we can best use this time before non native invasive species, just like come in and take over, you know, at my own place, after the rains we've even had in the last month. You know, the the bittersweet and the rose. And some of these, you know, kind of usual suspects. It feels like they have just exploded. And so it's given me, think, a real perspective of what's happening in the places in our natural communities that are forever changed. I think, you know, we're in, we're in a moment with some of these really short term opportunities. I also, I also think that, you know, with this kind of cataclysmic, you know, 1000 year event, however, however, you want to see, you know, this was not supposed to happen. You know, there's a hope that this will recommit people to some of our, some of our efforts to prevent, you know, climate change and climate related pollution, but it, it did happen here, and I do feel that people's relationship with the natural world has shifted, even if temporarily, that that it's not quite maybe the the safe haven or the place that people go to Sanctuary. You know this, this was, this was an event that has made people. More wary of the natural environment and and it's going to take a little while. I think it's going to take a little while and a lot of work to create some of those feelings of safety and Sanctuary. Again, Bill Hodge 1:05:17 it seems to me, I've also been seen lately. It seems examples of as much damage as the storm, the volume of water, the winds did that in whether it's the rush to clean up or maybe the economics of the cleanup that we're actually doing as much or more damage. I've seen videos of, you know, five ton trucks driving through river beds on on the guise of cleaning up log jams or getting, you know, debris from the riverbed. I mean, are you, are you seeing that? Am I right that I'm seeing the preponderance of those sort of activities? Speaker 4 1:05:51 Oh, yes, the the the debris cleanup, you know, we've, we've been seeing some maybe overzealous removal of trees, a lot of times healthy trees. And you know, structures that we need for our waterways. You know, the the situation around wildfires, and literally, you know, last week, the Joyce Kilmer Sachs wilderness was on fire, but wildfire is even closer to communities, you know, wildland urban interface, I have been learning a lot, and have learned a lot from forest managers about how they how they view the need to go in and act. But I also know that the scale of the destruction here is, you know, there has to be a prioritization. You know. What are you going to do first protecting people and private property, and then thinking about public lands? I'm waiting for that kind of zoom out and really maybe being more thoughtful. You know, unfortunately, in a situation like this, you know, humans, we go in and we want to make things safe. You know, we have that tendency to want to over control and over manage. We do Right, right? We have all the answers. We certainly don't. And so, there is, there is a need for balance. There's a need for some slower, just really, really thoughtful and just critical decisions made about how we move forward here, we know it will happen again. We know that our forests took a beating. We also know that they're resilient. We know they'll grow back. Do we have the ability to decide how they'll grow back? Do we have the ability to decide Where's you know, the the most important, or what is the most important? You know, things to think about for management. It seems Bill Hodge 1:08:08 like we, we already, we were having, I guess we'll say a strong dialog, let's say between collaborative efforts here in southern Appalachia, before I left, that you've been involved in as long as I was and since I left, of the question about natural impacts, you know, normally, you know, we the, you know, the the natural disturbance patterns that we get here, which have been exaggerated by this storm. There was already a question of what would be the normal this scale of this has changed that like it's made it's made forest management plans obsolete in some ways. And are you optimistic this will give us a chance to go back and maybe revisit that with fresh eyes? Or is because of the political climate we live in today? Are we in a double down? It's about the harvest. It's not about the function of the ecosystem. Maybe you don't answer that question, but, but I'm curious what you think about the state of Speaker 4 1:09:06 that. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot packed in there. Bill, well, one thing that is encouraging is there's, I think, more interest and more calls to to really look at indigenous forest management and just thinking about what we're learning from our neighbors, who've, you know, stewarded these mountains for 1000s of years, since time immemorial. And so that is, that is one hopeful piece another, I don't know hopeful. Hopeful piece for me is that there is a lot of work to do just in the parts of the public lands here where we know people want to go, you know, we know that people have a need to reconnect with these places. You know, people are really concerned. It would be wonderful to think about this moment as an opportunity to actually get more people involved in these questions of Land Management, maybe through volunteerism, through workforce development. You know, we know how much actual like physical work on the ground. This takes, and we've known for years that people who are interested in these kinds of jobs, you know, this kind of a career, or these issues in, you know, how is their the public lands in their backyard managed. We need more voices. And so my hope is maybe once we get over this hump of folks, you know, not, not a hump, that's not a great way to say it, but people taking care of themselves and their own and their families and communities, thinking farther out and, you know, throwing themselves into some of These discussions. So that's the opportunity. You know, of course, there's a challenge with what do we what do we do first? You know, the the calls for more wildland fire in the region. You know, I think those are just getting stronger and stronger, as we're seeing some of the wildfires post Helene and Bill Hodge 1:11:20 I'm sure, with the volume of downed trees while worried about fuels on the ground, but absolutely, we also have to be measured in how we approach that. Speaker 4 1:11:28 Yeah, we sure do. And I, I hope, and you know, somewhat, somewhat confident, you know that our, you know, if we think about our wilderness areas, if we think about our most remote and deepest, darkest wild places in the southern Appalachians, they are going to be okay. If they might see fire, they might see more damage, if for no other reason but for the sake of, you know, accessibility, they will be okay and they will be there once we kind of figure out in these more front country areas what what to do. Yeah, yep. So I don't know, maybe that's not a great way to say that maybe their security is in their remoteness. You know, as we know a lot of our wilderness areas, you know that that has been why they have been okay all these all these years, is being a little bit farther Speaker 5 1:12:42 out the wild idea is a production of wild idea media and hosted by Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds. Production and editing by Bren Russell at podlad Digital, support by Holly wilkoszewski at daypack digital. Our theme music Spring Hill Jack is from railroad Earth and was composed by John skeehan. Our executive producer and ringleader is Laura Hodge. You can find the wild idea wherever you listen to or download your favorite podcast. If you have a minute, please take a minute to give us a rating, and if you really like us, we hope you'll subscribe. Learn more about us at the wild idea.com you. Transcribed by https://otter.ai