THE WILDLANDS NETWORK vision for an 'Eastern Wildway' is bold and visionary............... "Once as wild as anywhere on Earth, Eastern North America is now a patchwork of protected lands sown into a human-dominated landscape"..............."Conservationists have long dreamed of restoring a vast network of wildlands in this region, from the Acadian forests of Maritime Canada to the subtropical Everglades of Florida"............. "In the early 1920s, wilderness visionary Benton MacKaye imagined an “Appalachian Trail” running the length of the Appalachian spine"............."Millions of hikers have since explored this trail as a portal to wildness"..........."Wildlands Network launched its first blueprint for a wilder East in 2002, when it released the Maine Wildlands Network Vision—a detailed, scientific approach to reconnecting the landscape of New England’s largest and most heavily forested state".............."This ambitious report set the stage for the 2006 report: From the Adirondacks to Acadia, an even bolder Wildlands Network Design comprising the entire Greater Northern Appalachians region"..............."Today, significant progress is being made toward creating a continental-scale Eastern Wildway—an extensive wildlife corridor linking eastern Canada to the Gulf of Mexico"................"The Eastern Wildway contains some of North America’s most beloved national parks, preserves, scenic rivers, and other wild places, from the wilderness of Quebec, the Adirondacks, and the Shenandoah Valley, to the Great Smoky Mountains and Everglades National Park"............."Protecting and expanding these and other key core areas is crucial to rewilding the East"............."The Eastern Wildway also traverses a wide array of eco-regions and climates, with the latter ranging from arctic to tropical. An equally broad diversity of wildlife inhabits these eco-regions, including red wolves, Canada lynx, cougars, eastern coyotes, martens, and other native carnivores".............. "Many resident plants, birds, fish, salamanders, and butterflies are found nowhere else on Earth—particularly those in the southeastern U.S., which was recently identified as one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots".............."In 2015, we formed the Eastern Wildway Network (EWN) to advance our efforts in eastern North America—more than 100 conservation leaders working to restore, reconnect, and protect regional habitats, and to help native species move safely through the landscape and adapt to climatic change"............"Although scientists and conservationists have conducted extensive planning, data analysis and mapping throughout the Eastern Wildway, these efforts have not kept pace with habitat degradation".............."Eastern mountain ranges are located so close to mega-population centers that development has spread into once-remote places"............... "Notably, the cities of Montreal, Quebec, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta are all located within the Eastern Wildway"................"To further complicate matters, many rural landowners are selling off large land parcels for development, logging, and resource extraction as rural economies continue to stagnate"............... "And with a growing number of Easterners building first or second homes in relatively wild places, people are collectively destroying the natural environments and solitude they seek".................To overcome these obstacles will require bold and collaborative action at many levels to make an Eastern Wildway a reality".............."From creating new conservation lands, reforming policies, and providing incentives for private land stewardship to working with transportation agencies to construct wildlife underpasses and overpasses, incorporating smart growth into local planning, and passing new legislation to confront growing challenges, each and every step will bring us closer to rewilding the East"............ "Ambitious? Absolutely!"........... "Necessary? No question!"

https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2018/08/national-parks-core-reserves-eastern-wildway&ct=ga&cd=CAEYACoUMTgyOTQ5MDM4Mzg2MjY4NDE2MjAyGmMxODQwZGYxM2VhNGIxOGU6Y29tOmVuOlVT&usg=AFQjCNFKKsa8hr2Sh6l93x5ZD6aRXh3E2Q

National Parks: Core Reserves Of The Eastern Wildway

By Erika Zambello on August 19th, 2018

Standing along the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina, staring out over the overlapping peaks of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, I was wrapped in the seasonal hues of orange, red, and yellow donned by nearby trees. Cars buzzed past, the parkway acting as a beautiful connector within the larger transportation system. The protected area not only aids human travel, but is a critical component of the Eastern Wildway.

The rumpled landscape of Great Smoky Mountains National Park is seen as one link to a north-south corridor along the Eastern Seaboard that would aid movements of flora and fauna/Erika Zambello

Ecologists have long recognized the importance of linkages between critical wildlife habitat regions. Now the Wildlands Network has emerged as a leader in establishing north-south corridors in the Northeast and western half of the United States and Canada. The need is obvious: migratory animals care little for political boundaries around states, national parks, and other reserves. When these wild regions are isolated, flora and fauna struggle to move freely between them, and the fragmented habitat cannot sustain healthy populations.

The Wildlands’ strategy is straightforward: protect, manage, and connect “core reserves” through natural corridors. The land I gazed over in Great Smoky Mountains is one of these core reserves, large enough to provide havens to bears and other large carnivores in addition to migrating birds, elk, rare salamanders, and so much more. Yet the challenges faced by the Smokies are emblematic of other national parks— Everglades in Florida, Shenandoah in Virginia, even Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in Maine—that are anchors of the corridor.

Aerial view of Moosehead Lake, Moose Island, and Squaw Bay, Maine. Photo: George Wuerthner

National parks receive a lot of visitors every year. Great Smoky saw more than 11 million people crowd through its entrances in 2017 alone. Overuse of park facilities and the landscape can lead to degradation. Plus, many of the core reserves are near population centers (Shenandoah is but 75 miles from Washington, D.C.) and are at risk for the effects of creeping development.

“And with a growing number of Easterners building first or second homes in relatively wild places,” the WN says, “people are collectively destroying the natural environments and solitude they seek.”

One of the 50 Red Wolves alive in the Wild today on the North

Carolina barrier islands

There is ongoing research to pinpoint corridor hotspots that need protection. For example, Interstate 40 separates Great Smoky from nearby national forests, hampering migration of a variety of species.

Using GPS and camera traps along roads, teams are working to identify corridor crossings. Road-kill surveys also help pinpoint areas where wildlife bridges could be built to allow unfettered movement in and out of this section of the national park.

Such an approach has been successful in Florida’s Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park. A barrier wall-culvert system reduced recorded annual wildlife deaths from 2,411 to just 158. More than 50 vertebrate species use the culverts, including fish, frogs, alligators, turtles, snakes, armadillos, shrews, rats, raccoons, and rabbits.

When private land can be used to enhance the Eastern Wildway, the WN works with local land trusts or national nonprofit organizations to either purchase the land directly or arrange conservation easements to facilitate wildlife migrations.

A proposed National Wildlife Corridors bill would provide a federally recognized “corridor” designation, which could be used to both highlight areas where management must not impede wildlife migration (such as building pipelines or mining) and/or focus federal funding on purchasing land or easements in identified corridor areas.

The Essential 16 Wildways/Wildlands Network

Already, the Essential 16 Wildlife Habitats have been identified to improve connectivity in the North and Southeast. Near Great Smoky, stakeholders are working to protect a dozen miles between two protected areas, including the park and national forests.

“Restoring this connection would enable wide-ranging species to move across a vast network of ridge tops and deep forest coves,” the WN team writes.

New national parks could further enhance the corridor; the envisioned High Allegheny National Park in West Virginia could encompass 500,000 acres.

If fully connected, the Eastern Wildway would link nearly half of land and water in eastern North America, encompassing habitats of black bear, bobcat, timber rattlesnakes, and box turtles in the southern Appalachians, eastern diamondback rattlesnakes, red wolves, Florida panthers, and gopher tortoises in the Southeastern coastal plain, as well as moose, lynx, fishers, martens, and eastern wolves in the northern Appalachians.

Map of eastern North America showing the rough extent of the Eastern Wildway in yellow, and lands under some form of protection in green. Source: Esri, i-cubed, USDA, USGS, AEX, GeoEye, Getmapping, Aerogrid, IGN, IGP, GIS User Community

Large protected areas are beneficial to humans as well. As I sat on a ridge beneath Clingmans Dome, the surrounding trees, birdsong, and mountain vistas instantly relaxed me. My breathing slowed and deepened, my mind cleared. “In wilderness,” notes the Wildlands Network, “we find solitude, spiritual renewal, and a quiet setting for backcountry recreation.”