Appalachian Trail: Perils for the path

Seventy-three years after its completion, the Appalachian Trail stands in the shadows, not just those cast by towering hardwoods but others darker and more foreboding.

Development nibbles along the edges of the 2,178-mile footpath that stretches from Georgia to Maine and winds past Waynesboro at roughly its midpoint. A National Parks Conservation Association study released earlier this year rattles off a list of the hazards: wind turbines, power lines, pipelines, race tracks and quarries.

And an old foe persists. Invasive species threaten plant, tree, mammal and reptile life along the trail’s path. The Eastern Hemlock tree, under assault for two decades, remains imperiled. Non-native plant species, such as crown vetch and Japanese stilt grass, compete with native plants to survive.

The legendary trail – the full length of which is hiked by about several hundred hardy souls each year – can survive the challenges intact, but that outcome shouldn’t be presumed, said Ron Tipton, senior vice president of policy for the Parks Conservation Association.

He’s hopeful that the parks group’s yearlong study will alert the public to how vulnerable the AT is to development.

“There is no guarantee that the trail will be the same tomorrow or almost as well protected,” Tipton said.

Giving the trail National Register of Historic Places status would help assure its protection, but requires the cooperation of all 14 of the states through which the AT runs.
It is possible the National Register designation will be sought in at least one or two states in the next year.

Tipton said development, whether it be cell towers, wind turbines or power lines, poses the biggest single threat to the trail.

“There are at least three wind turbine projects at various stages of permitting,” said David Startzell, executive director of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. “I don’t see that going away anytime soon.”

Among those projects are Maine Mountain Power’s proposal to build 30 400-foot wind turbines adjacent to the trail corridor on the ridges of the Redington and Black Nubble Mountains.

Some of the turbines are proposed for within one mile of remote and scenic sections of the trail.

Power lines cross the trail in several mid-Atlantic locations ranging from Northern Virginia to Connecticut.

Among the Conservation Association’s recommendations to restrain encroaching development:
• Increase federal money for the trail to help accelerate the National Register designation and pay for the gathering of data on natural and cultural resources.
• Finish a mission to fully protect the trail by acquiring the slightly more than 10 miles of the AT that are not yet publicly owned.
• Pursue high-priority private lands bordering the AT for addition to the protected trail corridor.
• Identify “potentially acceptable” crossings for road and energy projects as well as areas where crossings should be off-limits.

Manmade threats that objectives such as these target aren’t the only dangers for the path.

The trail also faces an unrelenting incursion by invasive plant species. Kudzu is a trail problem in Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee. In the trail’s southern region, including Shenandoah National Park’s Skyline Drive in Virginia, which starts just outside Waynesboro, the park’s Eastern Hemlock tree has been ravaged for more than 20 years by a pesky Asian insect known as the woolly adelgid.

The tree is a cooling element for trail streams.

“They (adelgid) are very small and you can hardly see them with the naked eye,” said Dale Meyerhoeffer, who works as a biological technician in Shenandoah National Park.

Meyerhoeffer said the adelgid is enclosed in a woolly white puff. The insect sucks the sap out of the Eastern Hemlock. The adelgid was first spotted in the United States in Richmond in the 1950s.

Still, there is hope for salvaging what is left of the Hemlock.

In recent years, a soil-injected pesticide inserted around the base of the tree has proved effective in neutralizing the adelgid.

“Sometimes, it takes a couple of months to draw the insect and kill it, but one application lasts three to five years,” Meyerhoeffer said.

While the trail has existed as a continuous entity since 1937, the purchase of lands by federal and state governments has changed it considerably. Most of the land purchases have come through the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund.

The land buys have preserved a protected swath of land about 1,000 feet in width.

“Close to half of the route of the trail has been relocated,” said Startzell.

Startzell said the land acquisition has taken the trail away from such precarious situations as the time when 200 miles of it ran along the shoulders of roads.

Startzell said that over the next year, one or two states will be looked at as places where the National Register designation is sought for the AT.

“We will wade into that and see what all might be involved in securing the designation,” he said.

The Appalachian Trail is maintained, in part, by thousands of volunteers. Over a period of more than 30 years, federal and state land acquisitions have aided in the relocation and buffering of some sections of the footpath.

The trail began as the vision of landscape architect Benton MacKaye in the 1920s. He outlined a plan for a path along the Appalachian Mountains. The idea evolved in the 1920s and 1930s under the efforts of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy and the thousands of volunteers who helped construct it.