Asheville, N.C. (August 27, 2008) — The Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC) provides opportunities in western North Carolina to get outside, be active, and enjoy your public lands while helping to protect them.
The National Trails System Act of 1968 established the standards for national scenic trails and named the Appalachian Trail one of the first two in the country. Although work had begun on the Trail more than 46 years earlier and it was open continuously from Maine to Georgia by August 1937, the act gave protection to the A.T. and a narrow buffer by bringing it under the umbrella of the national park system and set in motion a process for developing a whole network of scenic, historic, and recreational trails that now number in the dozens. This October marks 40 years since the act’s signing.
Whether you are interested in being a citizen-scientist, taking inventory of and controlling exotic-invasive plants, or learning about how to protect rare Grassy Balds ecosystems by shepherding goats in the Roan Highlands, ATC has a way for you to help celebrate this benchmark.
ATC invites the public to join in one of these upcoming activities:
1) The Baa-tany Goat Project in the Roan Highlands takes you back to the land, acting as guardian for the goats that are working hard to preserve the rare Grassy Bald ecosystem. If you can camp with them for a weekend (any one through the end of September), watch over the paddock as well as help with such tasks such as toting water for them, please contact jjudkins@appalachiantrail.org.
2) Learn about the threat of exotic invasive plants and how to identify and monitor them in order to get meaningful data back to land managers. We have inventory and control opportunities coming up:
- September 5 and/or 6 – Take a monitoring hike near Davenport Gap.
- September 12 and/or 13 – Learn how to control these plants south of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, near Fontana Village Resort.
- October 10th and/or 11 – Help us continue to manage and restore areas in Hot Springs.
Contact jjudkins@appalachiantrail.org for further information or to register.
3) The Rocky Top Volunteer Trail Crew offers a free week on the A.T. in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. There are a few spots left to camp and work reconstructing the Trail on the northern end of the park. If you are interested in joining its work during the weeks of September 3 – 10 or September 25 – October 2, contact adowns@appalachiantrail.org.
If your calendar won’t allow you to get out and volunteer on the Trail, but does allow for an evening of celebration and entertainment, then save October 3. The ATC is hosting its first regional fund-raising event, in cooperation with the Asheville Affiliates, at Pack Place in downtown Asheville from 6:00 to 10:00 p.m. Live music, great food, raffle/auction items, and A.T. activities are sure to set the stage for an evening of celebration while helping to protect the A.T. for another 40 years.
The Appalachian Trail Conservancy is a volunteer-based, private, nonprofit organization dedicated for more than 80 years to the conservation of the 2,176-mile Appalachian Trail, so that it will forever remain a simple footpath, within a protected greenway, along the Appalachian Mountains from Georgia to Maine.
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