Fellow Bristol Birders, The following message came to me through a circuitous route which I have deleted. But I thought the subject will be of interest to many. Mary Erwin Kingsport From: Lawson, Teresa Kay Sent: Wednesday, April 06, 2005 9:29 AM To: 'faculty@xxxxxxxx' Subject: from Environmental Studies "Mount Mitchell: An Environmental History" is the focus of a free public lecture at East Tennessee State University on Monday, April 11, at 7 p.m. in the Archives of Appalachia on the fourth floor of the Sherrod Library. Mount Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi River, sits less than 35 miles southeast of Johnson City, as the raven flies, in Mitchell County, N.C. The surrounding Black Mountain range was a wilderness in the 19th century, until the era of industrial logging in the southern mountains began in the 1880s and 1890s. Over the course of the next 20 years or so, the Black Mountains were ravaged. Thanks to then-new logging technology and the absence of regulation, the virgin spruce-fir forests - the same forests that had given the Blacks their name, as a spruce-fir forest appears black from a distance - were cut with reckless abandon, often milled merely for pulpwood and paper. Tourism in the Blacks declined after the trees were cut. But, starting around mid-20th century, the ecosystem began to rebound, and Mount Mitchell State Park was established. Today, the Blue Ridge Parkway brings visitors to the Blacks from afar. How does the Black Mountain ecosystem of today compare with that of the 19th century? And what insights can an environmental history of the region provide us for the future? In his talk at ETSU, Dr. Timothy Silver, author and professor of history at Appalachian State University, Boone, N.C., will address these questions and discuss his award-winning book, Mount Mitchell and the Black Mountains: An Environmental History of the Highest Peaks in Eastern America, which was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2003. This talk is co-sponsored by ETSU's new Environmental Studies Minor and Center for Appalachian Studies and Services, a state Center of Excellence. For more information or for special assistance for those with disabilities, contact Dr. Kevin O'Donnell, professor of English, at (423) 439-6679 or odonnell@xxxxxxxxx ************************************************* BRISTOL BIRDS NET LIST Bristol Birds Net Photo Gallery located at: http://f2.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/jwcoffeyy/album?.dir=/efd5 This is a regional birding list sponsored by the Bristol Bird Club to facilitate communications between birders and bird clubs of Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee. -------------------------------------------------- You are subscribed to Bristol-Birds. To post to this mailing list, simply send an email to: bristol-birds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe, send an email to bristol-birds-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the one word 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field. -------------------------------------------------- Wallace Coffey, Moderator wallace@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (423)764-****