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This webinar from Carolina Public Press is for journalists, students, lawmakers, policy officials and community members interested in learning more about the national forests and their environmental, community and economic impacts at the local, regional and state level.
Webinar topics include:
* National forests vs. national parks: What’s the difference?
* Who uses the forests?
* Understanding the management process of the national forests: A primer.
* The community, economic and environmental significance of national forests.
* How to track down resources, data and other information about the national forests in your community.
* Finding the story: Reporting tips about understanding and reporting about the national forests on a variety of beats — from business to the environment.
The featured trainer is Jack Igelman, Carolina Public Press’s lead contributing environmental reporter. Jack’s main reporting interest is in conservation and environmental stories that focus on the people, places and institutions involved with managing natural resources. Co-author of Trekking the Southern Appalachians, he has a master’s degree from Montana State University, where he studied natural resource economics. Based in Asheville, N.C., Jack also teaches college-level economics and is the lead reporter on Carolina Public Press’s Forest Lookout series, where he has reported about the unprecedented remanagement plan of the Pisgah and Nantahala national forests, which encompass more than 1 million acres in 18 North Carolina counties.
Click here to download this presentation [PDF].
About the Forest Lookouts series
This in-depth reporting series explores the future of the Pisgah and Nantahala national forests which are – for the first time in 20 years – undergoing an extensive re-planning process. Hiking through the national forests, paddling a river or fishing a stream, you can’t see the plan. But this process – which will ultimately oversee more than 1 million acres in 18 mountain counties using a process that has been largely untested on the East Coast – will have innumerable impacts on Western North Carolina’s residents, economies and environment. In Forest Lookouts, Carolina Public Press will pull back the layers of bureaucracy to report on the plan’s players and leaders, analyze the plan’s inception and implementation, find what community leaders, elected officials and conservationists think are the biggest issues facing the forests and explore the best ways to manage the forest for future generations — all to help residents across North Carolina understand what’s going on and how to participate.
Part One: Diving In: What’s at stake for Pisgah and Nantahala
Part Two: WNC’s National Forests: Is the public in? Or are we out?
Part Three: 50 years after the Wilderness Act, what’s the future of WNC’s wild places?
Sidebar: Understand the law: The Wilderness Act
Sidebar: Advocates, forest managers debate national forest logging claims
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