In December 1995 the Fund for Folk Culture, a private foundation based in Santa Fe, N.M., awarded American Folklife Center staffer Mary Hufford a $15,000 grant to document the relationship between culture and the forest on the Coal River in southern West Virginia. Since 1993, Dr. Hufford has been consulting with the Lucy Braun Association for the Mixed Mesophytic Forest regarding the cultural implications of forest deterioration on the Allegheny Plateau.
Lucy Braun, a pioneering ecologist, coined the term "mixed mesophytic" to describe what scientists now regard as the biologically richest temperate-zone hardwood system in the world. In collaboration with science writer John Flynn - a native of the region who coordinates the Lucy Braun Association's Appalachia Forest Action Project - and in consultation with dozens of area residents, Dr. Hufford has been developing a profile of this diverse forest's role in community life over the past 150 years.
The 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act form a partial backdrop for this project. As Dr. Hufford explains: "Scientists are linking forest deterioration with soil acidification caused by airborne toxins - including sulfates, nitrous oxide and ground-level ozone. And standards set by that law for sulphur emissions have fostered a booming market for Central Appalachia's low-sulphur bituminous coal. Because mountaintop removal is the predominant method of retrieving this coal, thousands of acres of forest habitat are being transformed by the excavation of coal as well as by sulfates airborne from utility plants on the Ohio and Tennessee rivers. This forest transformation depletes the habitat required for commercially valuable species like ginseng and a host of hardwoods that thrive in the rich unglaciated soils of the Appalachian coves."
Dr. Hufford's collaboration with the scientists, foresters, environmentalists and local communities cooperating in this effort grows out of her longstanding interest in folklife and environmental policy.
"In national news coverage of environmental crises," wrote Dr. Hufford, "the argument is often made that environmental protection costs jobs. . . . [But opinions heard on Coal River constitute] a missing perspective in the national environmental debate. Shifting toward ecosystem management, the U.S. Forest Service grapples with the question of where humans fit into ecosystems. The challenge is to create environmental policy that registers local as well as national and global concerns."
The grant, administered through Trees for the Planet Inc., will support Dr. Hufford's travel as well as in-depth photo documentation by Terry and Lyntha Eiler of the seasonal round of forest-related activities, including the annual ramp festival held each spring, the gathering and processing of wild greens, berries and nuts from more than a dozen hardwood species, the hunting of mushrooms, game and ginseng in the fall and associated narratives, music and leisure activities. Of particular importance is the forest's value as a threshold to the past and a resource for cultural identity. The photographs and related tape recordings will be added to the collections of the Archive of Folk Culture, and plans are under way to produce a CD-ROM and related publications based on the collection.
