Conservation is the act of preserving, guarding, or protecting; and includes the wise use of our natural environment.
The Mountain High Hikers, Inc. supports all conservation efforts and participates in several conservation efforts to help preserve the trails and the natural ecosystem:
If you are interested in information regarding volunteers, please contact the MHH Conservation Director, Kim Blankenship (khblan6@yahoo.com)
The State Botanical Garden of Georgia has listed these nurseries to help home gardeners find ethical sources of plant species native to Georgia.
Recommended Native Plant Nurseries List (pdf)
Download
The Forest Service has just announced THE three dates for in-person, public input before the Foothills Landscape Project is started.
The Forest needs your participation and voice.
The Foothills Landscape Project spans from the South Carolina border to Chatsworth and encompasses 157,625 acres, more than a fifth of the entire Chattahoochee National Forest. The project includes vegetation, road, and recreation management, and proposes up to 55,000 acres of commercial timber harvests and 63,000 acres of herbicide application. It also includes some of our most cherished places:
Georgia Forest Watch is asking hikers to help eradicate an invasive species coming in after the recent fires in the Cohuttas. Winter seems the best time to do this. Please access more information below:
“2016 fall's wildfires were a threat in many ways: they forced people to evacuate, killed patches of forest canopy, and smoked in towns. The biggest threat to our forests, though, may just now be getting started. The Rough Ridge Fire produced ideal conditions for non-native princess trees to reproduce and invade the Cohutta Wilderness. Native to Asia, princess tree's extraordinarily fast growth allows them to out-compete and choke out native species. Populations are beginning to explode in the Cohuttas. To help get this situation under control before the problem becomes too big to deal with, the first step is finding out exactly where the problem is.
We need volunteers to hike the trails in and around the Cohutta Wilderness and record where you see princess tree seedlings. Seedlings are easy to identify, and equipment, nothing more than a smartphone or GPS unit, can be provided if needed. If you haven't hiked in the Cohuttas since the fire, know that the area is as beautiful as ever. Keeping the Cohuttas from turning into a grove of princess trees will be an ongoing process. Georgia ForestWatch will work with the Forest Service to document locations of princess trees and assist in their removal from the Cohuttas. For that to work, though, we need help to quickly assess the situation. Please contact Georgia ForestWatch at 706-867-0051 or email Jess Riddle (jriddle@gafw.org) if you would like to help.”
We need all of the trails in the fire area surveyed for princess trees, essentially all of the trails west of the Jacks River. Whenever you feel like hiking in that area, if you would just record and send to me the location of any princess trees you see, that would be great. GPS coordinates from a phone or GPS unit are best. Putting an “X” on a topographic map works too. If you hike a trail and don’t see any, that’s helpful information too. I’m not sure how familiar you are with princess tree, so here are a few highlights of what to look for. In the winter the easiest thing to look for are the pods on mature trees. Each pod is about the size of a golf ball and pointed at one end. The pods come in branched clusters about a foot long. The trees are also distinctive because they have big thick twigs, as wide as your finger or wider, with a very open branch structure (lots of space between twigs). They’re a medium sized tree. Right now, we only know of mature trees along the streams, where water occasionally washes the soil bare. In spring, the leaves will make the seedlings stand out. The leaves are big and roughly heart shaped, kind of like a basswood or grape leaf. You can tell them apart because they are often even bigger, sometimes dinner plate size or even larger, and hairy. The leaves also come in pairs on the twigs. Instead of taking turns going up the twig, you will have a pair of leaves opposite each other, then bare twig, then a pair of leaves…. The seedlings could be anywhere in the burned area, from the Jacks River west.
These sites have more info on the trees
http://dendro.cnre.vt.edu/dendrology/syllabus/factsheet.cfm?ID=145
https://www.se-eppc.org/manual/princess.html
And this site has good photos
https://www.marylandbiodiversity.com/viewSpecies.php?species=2783
Once we have a good grasp on where the princess trees are, we’ll coordinate with the Forest Service on some workdays and other programs to actually get rid of them.
Jess Riddle
The below web sites provide information in regards to Georgia and North Carolina representatives who should be contacted regarding a particular conservation issue.
1. GA US Senators and US Representatives
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/GA
2. GA Senators and Representatives
http://www.house.ga.gov/Representatives/en-US/HouseMembersList.aspx
http://www.senate.ga.gov/senators/en-US/SenateMembersList.aspx
3. North Carolina US Senators and US Representatives
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/NC
4. North Carolina Senators and Representatives
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