Southern Appalachia in Conservation History

This is adapted from my presentation at the 10th Rooted in The Mountains Symposium, whose theme was “Giduwagi — Appalachian Historical Ecology.” Giduwagi is a Cherokee place name for their ancestral home in the mountains of Western North Carolina.

Whether we speak of environmentalism, conservation, preservation, biodiversity, wilderness, or sustainability, the concepts we use to think about our tangled relationship with the rest of nature are themselves the product of our prior experience with nature. We conceptualize and address our environmental…