CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Government agencies, nonprofits, businesses and individuals are all working to bring back West Virginia's "magnificent" spruce forests. Evan Burks coordinates the Central Appalachian Spruce Restoration Initiative for the Monongahela National Forest. Burks said the spruce forests are high-elevation remnants of the last ice age, almost lost in the logging that stripped much of the state in the early 20th century.

Restoring them is important, in part, because they create a cool-climate refuge for hundreds of rare species, Burks explained.

"The ground will be covered in moss and rocks," he said, "and it'll be cool and moist. If it's a hot summer day and you walk into that beautiful big spruce forest, it's going to feel like walking into an air-conditioned room."

Volunteers harvest seeds from the native trees' pine cones to have them grown into seedlings, he said, adding that they have planted hundreds of thousands of the seedlings across thousands of acres since 2007.

Burks said the spruce makes beautiful, high quality wood that is especially strong for its weight - part of the reason so much of it was cut a century ago. The Wright brothers used West Virginia red spruce, and instrument makers still value it, he added. Private timber companies help with the restoration, he said, noting that Plum Creek Timber worked with his group to plant spruce around other trees infected with the deadly woolly adelgid.

"They wanted to come in and underplant these dying hemlock trees with red spruce," he said, "so that when the hemlocks eventually do die, a tree will be there to grow up in its place."

Burks said researchers have found the forests take large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it in the forest floor, which means the trees are great for cleaning the air and water. That means a lot for brook trout and native fly-fishing, as well as for millions of people downstream near the Ohio and Potomac rivers, he added.

"These forests and these headwater streams are basically the lungs of the east coast. Restoring and protecting the red spruce forests along these mountain streams is really important," he said.

Eventually, they would like to connect West Virginia's spruce forests with those being restored in North Carolina, Tennessee and southern Virginia, he concluded.

More information is available at www.RestoreRedSpruce.org.






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Conservation groups, tribes and community organizers are praising President Joe Biden's decision Thursday to expand two national monuments in California.

Together, the monuments will gain about 120,000 acres. The Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument is 90 minutes northwest of Sacramento and the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument lies just east of Los Angeles.

Brenda Gallegos, public lands manager for the nonprofit Hispanic Access Foundation, said millions of urban families live close to the San Gabriel Mountains.

"A lot of our Latino communities don't have access to nature, prominently, like 67% of Latino communities don't have access to green spaces or blue spaces," Gallegos pointed out. "Having these expansions designated today brings us closer to closing that nature gap."

The president used his powers under the Antiquities Act to expand the monuments in order to increase public access and protect the watershed and wildlife habitat. The move also makes progress toward Biden's goal of protecting 30% of the country's public lands by 2030.

Gallegos said Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument in Lake County will include an area previously known as Walker Ridge, now renamed Moluk Loyuk, which means Condor Ridge in the Patwin tribal language.

"This is important because it establishes a co-stewardship with federally recognized tribes and will return the indigenous names of these lands to them," Gallegos explained. "This continues to build that great relationship with tribes."

Land managers will now create a new management plan for the area, which could include new campsites, hiking and mountain biking trails, and even off-highway vehicle-designated routes.

The Bureau of Land Management recently released its final Public Lands Rule, which is set to put conservation on equal footing with other multiple uses taking place on public lands.

The state of Utah has come out in opposition, pointing to the impact it could have on the almost 23 million acres of BLM land in Utah.

Redge Johnson, director of the Utah Public Lands Policy Coordinating Office, said the state supports conservation efforts but called the rule a "solution looking for a problem."

"What we have already put into conservation designations and then what you have for the acts that promote the conservation of the lands, why do you need to level that playing field?" Johnson questioned. "The playing field has more than leveled over the past 40, 50 years with the passage of all these acts."

Johnson contended Utah's lands and wildlife will suffer as a result of the rule and added it'll make mining critical metals used for batteries even more difficult. He and others, like Gov. Spencer Cox, called on the BLM to immediately withdraw the rule and work with stakeholders on more practical solutions.

Conservationists see the rule as a big win for restoring and sustaining public lands for future generations.

Johnson described Utah's public lands a "fire dependent ecosystem," adding fuel loads have accumulated drastically due to over a century's worth of fire suppression. He argued the rule will make executing and continuing vegetation management projects more difficult, including reducing the threats posed by fuel loads.

"One of the biggest contributors we have to carbon dioxide right now are wildfires, at least in the West," Johnson asserted. "Transportation, all the others, yes absolutely. But wildfires are a huge contributing factor to that. One of the best things we could do is reduce the fuel loads on some of these areas to reduce the fire risk and this rule puts that at risk."

The rule also creates the frameworks for "restoration and mitigation leases," which will allow groups to restore public lands or to offset the effects of a particular use. Johnson argued the leases will leave too many loopholes but the BLM said they will not "disturb existing authorizations."


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Conservation groups are rejoicing over the decision Friday by the Biden administration to reject a proposed mining road in Alaska.

The 211-mile Ambler Road would have sliced through the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, severing the migration route for a Western Arctic Caribou herd.

Alex Johnson, interior Alaska director for the National Parks Conservation Association, said it was important for the feds to take a stand in Alaska so mining interests do not start eyeing other national parks.

"This is a very expensive, destructive and just highly speculative project that does not in any way support our clean energy goals as a country," Johnson contended. "And ultimately would permanently threaten the health and well-being of local communities and the tribes."

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski slammed the decision, warning it could limit jobs and tax revenues for Alaska by preventing exploration for minerals she said are important to national security, like copper, cobalt, gallium and germanium.

Jayme Dittmar, a photographer and filmmaker from Fairbanks, said the road would have been very disruptive to the 66 Native American villages along the proposed route.

"That'd be 168 trucks passing through close vicinity to the villages," Dittmar pointed out. "There would be hundreds of bridges built. It would dismantle a subsistence livelihood that's been in place for thousands and thousands of years."

The road was seen as a negative for tourism to the Brooks Range area. According to the Alaska Travel Industry Association, Californians make up 9% of visitors to Alaska.