“Give Nature an Inch…”—The Resilience of The Appalachian Region: A Conversation with Heather Furman
In the years I have known Heather Furman, both as a professional colleague in conservation and as a friend and neighbor in northwestern Vermont, she has always shown a huge amount of optimism, borne of her true love for wild things. From her work with the Stowe Land Trust to her leadership of the Vermont Chapter of The Nature Conservancy (TNC), and now as Director of TNC’s Appalachian Program, Heather has always been a firm believer in the remarkable resilience of nature.
Heather recently gave the keynote address at the annual conference of the Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative. You can watch her address here, and I highly recommend it. Seeing her speak inspired me to ask her to talk more with us about the hope in the forests of New England and the greater Appalachian region.
– Liz Thompson
Heather Furman, Director of The Nature Conservancy’s Appalachian Program. Photo courtesy of The Nature Conservancy
Liz Thompson (LT): Thank you, Heather, for speaking with us, for sharing your inspiration and experience in conservation with the readers of From the Ground Up. Let’s start with some basics. What inspires you? What has brought you to this work, and what keeps you going on a daily basis?
Heather Furman (HF): Thank you. Where to start? It’s in my bones! The natural world is something I’ve always felt drawn to. I grew up in a rural-suburban setting, and spent most of my childhood outside. It was early on that I developed a real love and passion for nature and for animals and other species, for making sure that the natural world was protected and cared for. I didn’t have the words when I was young to understand what it meant, but I always wanted there to be a closer human connection to nature than what I saw in our world. So that has driven me right from the get-go, and I oriented my life from a very young age so that I could work in conservation.
As I’ve watched the world change over 50 years or so from when I was a kid, I have seen that many of those changes are not for the good—species loss, changes to the natural world, changes to the ecology. The more I’ve become educated, the more I know—that just drives my commitment.
But I always turn around and think about all the gains that we have made. We don’t talk enough about them. But that is the thing that keeps me going, grabbing ahold of those wins.
I always like to say that I was born in the year that the Cuyahoga River caught on fire.1 Look how far we have come from that! Look how far we’ve come from the pollution and devastation of the 1960s and 1970s. Look at all of the gains we’ve made! We weren’t talking about dam removal and about restoration to the degree that we are now. That’s what keeps me motivated.
“Look how far we’ve come from the pollution and devastation of the 1960s and 1970s. Look at all of the gains we’ve made!”
The other thread is that when you look at the last 150 years and the devastation that the agricultural land clearing and the industrial development brought to this continent and its species, and then look at how much nature has rebounded from that, especially here in New England, that is a reason to keep your shoulder to the wheel.
LT: Your work spans the length of the Appalachian Mountains, a region that has been recognized as one of TNC’s Global Priority Landscapes. Why are the Appalachains so important?
HF: The Appalachians are one of the largest intact temperate forests in the world. This landscape is so connected and intact. There are very few places like it globally. China is really the only other place in the world that has a similar intact temperate forest. As a system, the Appalachians just popped off the map in our analyses. The biodiversity is incredibly high, especially in the southern part of the region. And it is a huge carbon sink. This is remarkable, given the heavy human population in the region, but the forest is what really makes it so significant.
And this forest was almost completely gone 100 years ago. Think about how it has come back in 150 years to be such an intact and rich forest! We can cause this devastation, but we can also save this forest.
“We can cause this devastation, but we can also save this forest.”
The Appalachian Region. Photo courtesy of The Nature Conservancy
LT: That recovery is indeed remarkable—yet there are new threats to the region. What are they? What are the biggest threats today, to the region and indeed to the globe?
HF: Climate change is the biggest threat globally. It is pushing and pulling on several levers at the same time. The condition of the forest, the quality of habitat is being affected by climate change. The rapid pace of warming and the impact that that is having for species movement—this impact is only going to get worse over time.
The socioeconomic impact is another huge thing that we cannot predict. As an example, how many times can Montpelier (Vermont’s capital) get flooded out before it is really no longer a town?2 Until it is not functioning as a community any longer? I think about the Montpelier-Barre area as a major employment center of the state, serving many surrounding communities. When businesses continually go under because they’re being impacted by flooding, what does that do to the long-term trajectory of economics and social structure in the region? What are the other health and human services impacts?
So, the challenges and threats go way beyond concerns about our forest, yet we can’t protect our forests if we don’t have social and economic stability. It’s all tied together.
By and large we are protecting the right places, but to me the threat is the long-term health and quality of our habitats that are affected by economics and climate change. Habitats will continue to be degraded, and species are in decline. Are we invested in keeping the habitats resilient?
Burnt Mountain is a new 5,000-acre preserve in the Northern Green Mountains of Vermont, near the north end of the Appalachian chain. Photo Courtesy of The Nature Conservancy
LT: How can we address these threats, then? If you could name one thing, what’s the most important aspect of conservation in the region?
HF: (Sigh) This is the million dollar question. The ten million, hundred million dollar question!
It takes time for our policies to be caught up to where we need to be, but still, I’m very encouraged by the amount of money that’s being made available for investing in restoration, both forest restoration and aquatic restoration. That is a very important pathway that has been under-resourced. Land protection is important, but what is the next thing? We need to make the habitat functional and whole. This involves restoration. And this restoration depends on people having a relationship with the land. This allows them to see the interconnection, and the importance of the land and water in their lives. We need both more protection, and better relationships with the land.
“...restoration depends on people having a relationship with the land. This allows them to see the interconnection, and the importance of the land and water in their lives.”
LT: When it comes to restoration, how long do we need to stick around? Do we need to keep managing ecosystems, or will they heal themselves over time once we have set things right, as much as we can?
HF: There is a law of diminishing returns, of course. You can keep pulling the garlic mustard, but at some point, one has to ask, are we still being helpful? What are the real actions that will tip the balance so that the system will recover on its own? We have good science to guide this.
Dam removal is a great example. I’m so encouraged by the results of dam removal in areas like Maine and the Pacific Northwest. The fish know what to do! The minute that dam is out they are there right up there in their historic habitat, moving upstream like they’ve done for millennia. It’s like a miracle, just unbelievable. It’s not about fish ladders and all of that nonsense. It’s about getting rid of the dams. It’s about restoring the ecosystem, so that it can become dynamic and healthy and functioning again.
Nature can recover on a scale that we could hardly even imagine. That’s the work for us. Where can we find the opportunities to take advantage of nature’s resilience? Our dear friend Rose Paul (a long-time TNC scientist) would say “Give nature an inch, and it’ll take a mile.” We need to figure out the best use of resources to really tip the balance in the direction that we want to go, so that nature itself can finish the work. That’s the job for us as practitioners working in large landscapes.
“Nature can recover on a scale that we could hardly even imagine. That’s the work for us. Where can we find the opportunities to take advantage of nature’s resilience?”
In your own backyard, yes, do what I do in mine! Continue to pull every last little bit of garlic mustard, continue to improve your own little corner of the world.3 But in the larger landscape—a river system, for example—we need to focus on having the biggest impact and on letting nature rebound.
LT: So, in the larger Appalachian region, what are your highest priorities?
HF: We have an initiative called “Reconnecting Appalachian Rivers.” And one of the most important strategies is supporting and investing in watershed groups and organizations—“Friends of the River” groups, that sort of thing. These groups may need capacity to help unlock federal money for dam and other barrier removals. We are leveraging small amounts of money to support those groups, so that they can get projects far enough along to access public money, enough to actually remove aquatic barriers. That is a great investment for us—to put it in places where people are working on the ground, where they might need a bit of extra support to get a project across the finish line.
Another important part of our aquatic systems work is floodplain restoration. We are making big investments across the region, including restoring American elm to floodplains.
On the terrestrial side, TNC has a very ambitious goal of protecting 18 million acres across the Appalachians, through a combination of restoration and land protection. In the southern part of the region, that involves partnerships with federal agencies to restore lands degraded by extraction, for example. Here in the Northeast, it mostly involves private landowners, who own much of the forest. Our Family Forest Carbon Program, for example, allows people to be paid to manage their land for carbon storage, rather than for timber.
As the climate changes, plants and animals are shifting their ranges to adapt and thrive. This map shows where mammals, birds, and amphibians are moving. Circled in red is the Appalachians landscape, a virtual superhighway for nature. © Dan Majka/The Nature Conservancy (adapted for print by Nicholas Rapp)
LT: Thank you so much for all of this, Heather. Is there anything more you’d like to add about making this region, and particularly New England, our little corner of the Appalachians, more resilient in the face of all the challenges?
HF: I believe there is a great deal of hope in our understanding of the problems, and in the science that we are bringing to bear to these problems. Tools like Vermont Conservation Design and TNC’s Resilience Analyses are so important in helping us understand where and how we should be working. We have new science coming out all the time. A very recent paper by TNC scientists and others points to the importance of focus: of following the science and putting the effort where the impact can be greatest. We need to find the lands and waters that most need our help, and we need to use the strongest tools possible to protect those places. We need to keep our shoulders to the wheel!
1 Read the history of this heavily polluted waterway, and the 1969 fire, here.
2 Read about the July 2023 flooding of Montpelier here.
3 See Doug Tallamy’s interview on this very topic.
Heather Furman is Director of The Nature Conservancy’s Appalachian Program, overseeing conservation of this Global Priority Landscape. Heather provides leadership for continental-scale conservation, leading teams and initiatives across 17 states and three Canadian provinces. Before that, Heather served as the Conservancy’s State Director in Vermont. She has held positions with federal and state governments and with local and international NGOs. In addition to her formal education, she has traveled extensively throughout Europe, Latin America, and Asia. She resides in Vermont on the unceded land of the Western Abenaki known today as the Northern Appalachians.