Wild woods are dense and riotous with lush green growth, but around the Cumberland Plateau, paper companies and their timber suppliers are converting forests into lines of loblolly pines. These plantations are a model of symmetry, but they do not support the diversity of forest life found in native forests. While more than 175 different trees cover the plateau, the plantations host one type of pine tree, leaving them vulnerable to invasive species and plagues of the destructive pine beetle. While the plateau is carpeted with undergrowth, no bushes grow in the alleyways between the pines -- thanks to generous doses of herbicide -- and foxes, songbirds and the eastern cougar -- on the verge of regional extinction -- are left without food or cover.

Right now, much of the forests in the Cumberland Plateau BioGem -- stretching through Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North and South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama -- remain largely wild, but the heat is on throughout the South to clearcut these forests and replace them with tree plantations. Southeastern forests supply 20 percent of the world's paper. These forests are being liquidated to make disposable paper products.

But progress is being made. In 2004, BioGems Defenders sent a flood of petitions to the giant paper company Bowater -- the largest landowner on the Cumberland Plateau -- demanding that it halt its destructive forestry practices. Soon after, the company contacted NRDC to begin discussions, and in June 2005, agreed to stop clearcutting natural hardwood forests and converting them into pine plantations. Bowater also pledged not to purchase fiber from pine plantations that replace native forests and to limit its use of harmful chemical herbicides and fertilizers.

But now the Bush administration wants to sell almost 10,000 acres in North Carolina's Nantahala and Pisgah national forests, including areas containing old growth trees rarely found in the eastern United States. The administration is also moving forward with commercial logging in wild areas of the state, even though North Carolina's governor opposes the projects.

Tell the Bush administration not to sell off or log North Carolina forests in the Cumberland Plateau.

Photo credits: Tellico River, Unicoi Mountains, Tennessee, © Larry Ulrich. Red-shouldered hawk, © Irwin and Peggy Bauer.