The Grafton Forest Wilderness Preserve in Maine’s Mahoosuc Range — where 21,300 acres of the A.T. landscape are now protected.
Photo by Jerry Monkman

Throughout the Mahoosuc Range, a rugged glaciated landscape spanning the border between New Hampshire and Maine, boulders are strewn around the mountain slopes like they were tossed there by giants. Pine trees are wizened and stunted by the wind. Exposed granite slabs mottle the green mountains, minerals sparkling under the glare of the sun. Thick, leafy forests conceal black bear and moose and bobcat, hunting for prey and shelter. In this wild place, fortitude is frequently tested, whether you walk on four legs or two. Appalachian Trail hikers consider the portion in the Mahoosuc Range to be among the most challenging of the entire 2,194-mile route.

But the greater the challenge, the greater the reward. This chiseled terrain is just one critical part of a mosaic of lands that make up the large, complex, multifaceted Appalachian Trail landscape, which stretches far beyond the footpath itself. Protecting that landscape for generations to come requires the dedication of many partners working together in new and creative ways. The Appalachian Trail Landscape Partnership (ATLP) — a coalition of more than one hundred conservation organizations, land trusts, and local, state and federal agencies — has been coordinating those efforts since 2015, seeking to connect communities, organizations, and people to each other and to the A.T. In a time of great division, we need that connective tissue now more than ever. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC) and the National Park Service have been the primary catalysts to the ATLP’s efforts.

A Place of Belonging

Public land advocates like to say the A.T., like all units of the National Park System, belongs to all of us. However true that is on paper, it hasn’t always felt true for many people. For a variety of reasons, there are countless people who haven’t felt a connection with the A.T. or even the natural world at large. Embracing and encouraging a sense of belonging about the A.T., and turning that feeling into action, is the work of the ATLP. This kind of cooperation has never happened on this scale. On some level, it’s about tossing out the old rule book when it comes to conservation, the one where people worked in their own tight sphere and felt they were in competition for support and resources.

The ATLP, by contrast, encourages groups to think expansively and to reach across miles, barriers, and jurisdictions to effect change and foster community. More than thirty-eight million people live in this dynamic landscape, representing a diverse cross-section of cultures and differing relationships to the Trail. Countless people have long ties to the Appalachian Mountains, such as Indigenous groups and rural families who lived in the mountains long before the national parks were created, but have felt unheard and unseen in the environmental and conservation movements. Others have felt unwelcome and unsafe in these wild places because of systemic racism and bigotry. “Whose land is this anyway?” asks Dr. Carolyn Finney in her book Black Faces, White Spaces. “And is ownership only about a piece of paper, or can it mean something more?”

Since the ATLP’s inception seven years ago, conservation projects have occurred up and down the A.T. corridor, in places where there is a real interest to work with communities, including community members who are not always engaged in conservation but may be interested in ecosystem benefits, including recreation. Some great examples are the New River Land Trust project in southwest Virginia that is protecting forests while expanding a trail network to the NDPonics project — an Indigenous-founded and Indigenous-led foundation that aims to restore Monacan lands.

An essential underpinning of this work is the ATC’s Wild East Action Fund, which funds key land acquisition and conservation projects that, over time, will connect the greater A.T. landscape like pieces in a puzzle. So far, the fund has awarded nearly two million dollars to help protect more than 80,000 acres across all fourteen states the A.T. traverses. Conservation projects range from a nine-acre plot in Calf Mountain, Virginia, to seventy-nine acres in Salisbury, Connecticut, to more than 1,500 acres at Indian Pond in Orford, New Hampshire. Every parcel makes a difference.

In the Mahoosuc Range, the ATLP has recently helped to protect 21,300 acres of the A.T. landscape in Grafton Forest, a dense forested tract that is punctuated by crystalline ponds and the curling ribbon of the Swift Cambridge River. These forested uplands foster populations of martens and weasels, reptiles and amphibians (such as the threatened wood turtle), and larger mammals like the black bear and Canada lynx. It’s not uncommon in these forests for hikers to hear the familiar rat-a-tat drumming of three-toed woodpeckers or the scratchy chick-a-dee-dee call of the boreal chickadee.

But, like many other areas along the A.T. corridor, the Grafton Forest also faces increasing development pressure and habitat loss. The forest abuts already protected lands including Grafton Notch State Park in Maine and the adjacent Mahoosuc Public Reserved Land. Due in part to the efforts of ATLP partners, the Forest Society of Maine and Northeast Wilderness Trust, with the ATC providing essential funding through the Wild East Action Fund, this major area of forest will be stitched together with these existing public lands, creating a critical conservation corridor that will ensure more habitat for native plant and animal species, numerous recreational opportunities, and stunning viewsheds for A.T. hikers and other users.

This is vital work, not just because it reconnects the natural world and protects the Trail and the experiences we seek on it, but also because of the bonds it creates. A century ago, when Benton MacKaye envisioned a long-distance hiking trail in the Appalachians, he recognized the divisions that he saw growing between people — saying that we “civilized ones. . . are potentially as helpless as canaries in a cage” and lamenting the “weakening wall of civilization,” compared to the freer, more open-hearted existence that comes from living closely with nature. MacKaye’s “realm” would be in contrast to urbanization and focus on “cooperation and mutual helpfulness.” To MacKaye, the A.T. would be a recreation camp writ large, an opportunity to foster cooperation and helpfulness on a much larger scale.

The A.T. just south of Great Barrington in Massachusetts.
Photo by Raymond Salani III

MacKaye was speaking more literally, of course, about the interactions of recreational users on the Trail. But the ATLP is, in a way, an expansion of MacKaye’s vision of cooperation and inclusion. He wanted more people to access and enjoy these mountains for the betterment of all, and he knew that access and enjoyment require conservation. This is why the ATLP is working to identify high-priority lands with important conservation values, such as resiliency to the effects of climate change, important biodiversity, access to clean water, or rare or threatened habitat. We have seen that a warming planet will cause migrations of animals and plant species, and people, seeking more habitable places. It’s already happening in the southern Appalachians. The pressure on this mountain corridor will only increase in the future, and we all should have a vested interest in determining what happens next.

Bound by the Land

The work of the ATLP is limited only by the creativity and commitment of participants, which is why the partnership is seeking to broaden and diversify the range of voices providing input on the A.T. Landscape. One example is the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA), the state wildlife organization. In addition to permitting and overseeing hunting and fishing in the state, the TWRA has led numerous efforts to protect wildlife habitat and species, including the reintroduction of elk to east Tennessee, where they once roamed in abundance. Along the state’s eastern edge, the A.T. traverses the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and crosses some of the highest peaks along the route. In national parks like the Smokies and Shenandoah to the north, hunting is prohibited. But sometimes it surprises hikers to learn that hunting is permitted along some 1,250 miles of the A.T. as it snakes through and near national and state forests, recreation areas, and private game lands. With their immense respect for and understanding about the outdoors, hunters are important conservation partners, and finding common ground between the hiking and hunting communities is essential. Without question, hunters belong to the A.T. landscape.

The A.T. footpath runs alongside working farmland in the Central Pennsylvania Valley.
Photo by Linda Norman

In Maryland, similarly, the Heart of Maryland Conservation Alliance is a network of people and organizations taking a collaborative approach to the region’s farmlands, forests, waterways, and historic resources. Planners in Frederick and Washington counties also play key roles in these efforts. Here, the A.T. offers a comparatively soothing respite from the harder, rockier sections to the north and south, including the flat Chesapeake & Ohio Canal Towpath for three miles, and passing significant public lands such as Gathland State Park, whose crenellated stone monument to Civil War correspondents is one of the most distinctive historic structures along the footpath. Here, too, are the wide-open fields of the Monocacy and Antietam battlefields, the glassy serenity of Antietam Creek and the scrappier, often muddier Catoctin creek, and the striking Sugarloaf Mountain, an isolated monadnock with its many trails winding up to spectacular views.

Rural families and farmers with long ties to this region go back generations and have the same goals of protecting the lands and waters of the Appalachians that traditional conservationists do. Farmers and rural denizens belong to the A.T. landscape.

Elsewhere in Maryland, the National Aquarium in Baltimore may not seem like an obvious collaborator in Appalachian Trail conservation, but as a highly visible institution in an urban setting, it offers a great example of how city dwellers, especially young people, can learn about and play a role in the greater A.T. landscape. With 1.5 million annual visitors, the aquarium is the most popular tourist attraction in the state, representing far-reaching educational opportunities, especially for a diverse cross-section of people. One permanent exhibit traces the water cycle in Maryland from its source in the Allegheny Mountains, which the A.T. traverses in West Virginia, Maryland, and southern Pennsylvania, down through a tidal marsh and a seaside beach before it flows out to the Atlantic Ocean’s continental shelf. What exhibits like this teach, and what the ATLP can help leverage, is that city folks also belong to the A.T. landscape.

The Shendandoah and Potomac rivers converge along the Trail in historic Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.
Photo by Raymond Salani III

Sustaining all this conservation work is a commitment to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI). In its strategic plan, the ATLP acknowledges that even this broad-based partnership cannot on its own eliminate all existing barriers and exclusionary systems; doing so will take much sustained work across many sectors. But the ATLP has committed to three main JEDI goals: advocating for environmental laws, regulations, and policies that are free from discrimination and are rooted in equity; ensuring that place-based initiatives provide leadership opportunities for populations that are disadvantaged, economically distressed, and underrepresented; and recognizing that climate change will continue to perpetuate inequities without a critical examination of traditional conservation practices.

The ATLP has begun with a broad coalition of more than one-hundred organizations, their boots on the ground, their people working hard to identify and reach out to other partners and take small and large steps towards a more inclusive style of conservation. Each of those organizations represents countless members, donors, and constituents, including many people who may never hike a single foot of the A.T. That’s okay. What matters most is that more and more people in the A.T. landscape understand that they’re part of this work and that their voices are needed. Going forward, maybe we won’t talk as much about how the Trail belongs to all of us, but about how all of us belong to the Trail, and to the beautiful and vital landscape that surrounds it and sustains so much.

Kim O’Connell writes about nature, science, history, and conservation from her home in Arlington, Virginia. She is a former artist in residence at Shenandoah and Acadia national parks. kimaoconnell.com