Fantastic Damage

This photograph highlights an old-growth forest in the Craggy Gardens area of the Blue Ridge Parkway outside of Asheville. Stunning and awe-inspiring, these woodlands have long-faced threats from climate change and directly from industry looking to profit from their destruction through logging. The newly released Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Plan by the National Forest Industry calls to increase the acreage for logging annually by almost five times, from the current 650 acres to 3,200 acres. This new plan allows for logging in half of the 1 million acres that comprise the Pisgah and Nantahala forests, and much of it is made up of old-growth forests that contain rare and diverse ecosystems. Of the more than 36,000 comments submitted to the Forest Service, over 14,000 were objections, setting records in both categories. One can draw through lines from this new plan and ones like it to the obliteration of many Black neighborhoods through gentrification, urban renewal, and riotous acts perpetrated by racist white mobs.
 
Whether it be the Greenwood neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma - better known as Black Wall Street - or the Rosewood neighborhood in central Florida, Black progress has often been met with swift and deadly opposition. The same machinery used for logging our woodlands has been used to carve a path through historically Black neighborhoods in Asheville, from Eagle Street and East End to the Burton Street neighborhood with the construction of I-26 and Patton Avenue, all in the name of urban renewal and progress.