The Chattooga Conservation Plan Builds on Recent Success

Twenty-five years ago, Georgia's pre-eminent ecologist and founder of the University of Georgia's Institute of Ecology, Eugene Odum, recommended that at least 40% of the land area of the region remain or be restored to natural forest communities. He argued that this amount of protection would be necessary to retain the full range of species and life processes that currently exist throughout the Southeast. Since then, habitat loss has been recognized as the single greatest cause of extinction; reversing our current rate of habitat destruction will be critical if we wish to conserve our threatened biological heritage. Adoption of the Chattooga Conservation Plan will be a big step toward the realization of Odum's vision for the Southern Appalachians.

Encouragingly, the recently revised LRMP for the Nantahala-Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina prescribes restoration of native forest habitat through the establishment of a network of mature, interior forest areas, many larger than 2,500 acres, and some exceeding 7,500 acres, interconnected by forested lands. The plan states that these old growth areas "serve as permanent reservoirs of biological diversity with the intent to allow the restoration of functioning old growth ecosystems at the landscape scale." The current Nantahala-Pisgah LRMP is similar to the proposed Chattooga Conservation Plan. In fact, the Nantahala model has already been implemented on that portion of the Chattooga River watershed that lies in North Carolina.

The Chattooga Conservation Plan builds on the success of the Nantahala-Pisgah model. It will move a step further toward the responsible conservation and restoration of the entire Chattooga River watershed by integrating Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina public lands management and aiding private landowners in their search for sustainable and economically viable land stewardship alternatives. Furthermore, its ability to link with other forests of the Blue Ridge Escarpment satisfies a key tenet of conservation biology, namely that reserves need to be connected across the landscape in a systematic fashion. The Chattooga Conservation Plan is a concrete action that can be taken now to begin the conservation and restoration of a functioning native Southern Appalachian ecosystem.

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