The following article was first published in Earth First!, Vol. VI, #6, pp 22-23, 1986. A few changes and corrections in punctuation have been made in the text.
Valley and Ridge: A Vision of the Land
by R. F. Mueller
Forget Virginia, forget West Virginia, Tennessee and all the rest. These are not the land, only the sterile political abstractions of exploitation and rapacious development. Think rather of the long-ridged mountains, emerald-forested, mile upon mile, their blue-shaded coves and hollows splashed with the white of early spring Service Berry, later with Dogwood and the blush of Redbud. Think of the ancient valley streams-Shenandoah, Clinch, Holston and New-gathering their waters from mountain springs and seeps to enrich bottomlands and distant estuaries. Think of a land once nourishing a great wilderness fauna, with Bison and Gray Wolves in the brushy burns and Golden Eagles in the contrail-free sky.
Nowhere else is there a closer connection, nowhere outside the Valley and Ridge, a more subtle interweaving of vegetation and mineral chemical substrate, of bedrock-derived soil and evolved tree species and variety. Where the eroded upthrust of sharply-folded ridge sandstone or quartzite strikes southwest, there is a denial of moisture and nutrients, but the dipping valley limestone layers yield springs and seeps rich in dissolved calcium and magnesium, and on the bottoms accumulate flood-deposited nitrogen and phosphorous-rich organic soils. Everywhere, the manifold plant diversity bears witness to variations in rock and soil, elevation, rainfall and latitude.
On windswept and sunbaked ridges stunted Chestnut Oak, Bearoak and Yellow Pines prevail, with their understory of laurel "hells." But in the valley alluvial plains and limestone hills there is a lushness of Black Walnut, Butternut and Coral Berry; while between these extremes, from the highest mountain slopes through the coves and descending stream courses is a gradual and orderly transition between species native to boreal, northern hardwood forest and southern forests-all adjusted to climatic zones and local moisture and nutrient flows ordained by the geologic imperatives.
Today the Valley and Ridge is under a spell of illusion. The mountain forests, still recovering from turn-of-the-century lumbering devastation, are again building toward the extended old growth deciduous-conifer ecosystem whose potential for wildlife and indigenous biologic diversity can only be guessed at from sketchy historical records. Regrettably, some species, such as the Passenger Pigeon, are gone forever; but others, like the Eastern Cougar and Gray Wolf, only need our encouragement. Even the spectacular Chestnut may flourish again in time through the appearance of disease resistant varieties.
The mountain forests, always picturesque with their clear streams and rocky gorges, have long beguiled professional foresters and conservationists alike. Deceptively verdant, their cloak of vegetation hides dry, shallow and stony soils. It also hides the limited but critical role of moisture-rich coves and riparian zones, and particularly the ecologic linkage between uplands and the mainstem intermountain streams (Mueller, Mabon 1985 issue),
Within the highlands, ranging from dry ridges through the more hospitable slopes, to the coves and secondary streams large enough to have flood plains, there is considerable variation in detail of coexisting woody and herbaceous vegetation. In some of the richest upland valleys, one may see as many as two dozen major tree species in the space of several acres; while on the mountain slopes only a few hundred feet above, less than five species is the rule. Even the richest highland forests only rarely contain such demanding species as Black Walnut and Butternut, which are common on a variety of soils in the major valleys.
It is in the mountain forests that the Forest Service holds sway, keeping up its part of the illusion, an illusion of productivity and wise use. But in reality, under its abrahamic concepts timber is everything, or rather timber, minerals and game protoplasm; and the timber must be "harvested" even if it costs ten times as much to get it out as it brings on the market (Wilderness Society Issue Brief, July,1984). Also, as the latest FS management plans tell us, these cheap markets must themselves be stimulated by federal policy.
According to an illusory time sense the trees on a given mountain slope must be logged every 60 to 90 years before they become "overmature." But in actuality they are not allowed to reach profitable sawlog size and many are cut under even shorter rotations for nearly valueless pulpwood. Meanwhile, wildlife is managed, with almost total emphasis on game species, as mere adjunct to timber production, and this management is itself used to justify the deficit logging. In this scheme expensive roads to remote stands of inferior timber can be excused because they create hunter access and clearcuts serve the convenient purpose of providing "wildlife openings." Papered over by this obfuscating jargon is the fact that wilderness species are increasingly harassed and extinguished. In particular, no provision is made for habitat for the Eastern Cougar, which may still be present.
In the interior of the Valley and Ridge province the major stream valleys are deep and narrow for the most part, the homes of rivers that parallel the ridges and send perpendicular branches into the mountains in the classic trellis pattern. These mainstem valleys should serve as prime nutrient reservoirs for any mountain ecological preserve (as stressed in my Mabon '85 article). To the east the edge of the province is formed by the Great Valley of Virginia, the home of the sprawling semi-dendritic branches of the Shenandoah and James Rivers and where the bedrock is largely limestone and dolomite. These "carbonates," with their more readily available nutrients and generally higher water tables, provide a better milieu for plant growth than do the mountain soils, so the Great Valley is largely agricultural. According to reports of early European explorers, large parts of it were kept in a grassy or brushy state by native-set fires before the period of settlement by whites.
Although the Great Valley is low relative to the mountains, it is a region of considerable relief as a result of stream dissection. As a consequence there are numerous winding ridge complexes, conical hills and incised streams with narrow flood plains that result in local relief of 300 feet or more. It is here that the second illusion occurs.
To the casual observer the Great Valley is the picture of prosperity. Cattle and sheep graze on rolling hills dotted with neat farmsteads that support the latest in machinery. Local newspapers record the pride of farmers in tillage practices approved by the Department of Agriculture. Yet inquiry tells us that much, if not most, agriculture here, as in the intermountain valleys to the west, is unprofitable in both a financial and a resource sense. Strangely, the very illusion of prosperity is the clue to the degradation of the land. Most of the farmers hold jobs in nearby industries which pay enough to support what has evolved into essentially a hobby agriculture. And like any expensive hobby, it is well stocked with elaborate mechanical toys that have come to be considered necessary props. With them these part-timers indulge in land clearing and fencing and drainage projects which, as investments in their own right, never yield sufficient gains to justify them.
The beef cattle that graze behind the expensive wire fences on well fertilized pastures may be sleek and healthy, but the 50 to 60 dollars per hundred weight they will bring will not nearly cover the total cost of production. Though many Valley soils are fertile, an agriculture based on fossil fuels, technology and expensive labor on rough terrain can't compete with areas such as the Midwest's corn belt, but can only add to surplus crops.
In the days before the industrialization of agricultural towns, steep marginal land was degraded by grain cropping and grazing to support a meager subsistence life style. Now much of this land is suffering through a second cycle which, though seldom leading to the barn-sized gullies of the first, nevertheless involves a steady decline in land quality through excessively intensive cultural practices. Thus slopes that are better suited to grazing row cropped and hills that should be forested are grazed. Even the best Valley soils are used to produce the feed grains and dairy products which are in oversupply, while essential vegetables are imported from the outside.
In summary, the Valley and Ridge geographic province, that grand former wilderness that first challenged Europeans to become Americans, is caught in an atavistic time warp in which land uses are governed by outmoded esthetics and work ethics rather than sound economics and ecology. While Forest Service technocrats try to recast its forests as short rotation tree farms in defiance of bedrock geology, much of its agriculture hangs on simply because tradition prizes a bucolic landscape over a more cost effective and harmonious state of nature. Also, as any county agent will tell you, few farmers (like the Forest Service!) are willing to wait the years it takes to produce a timber crop. In the words of Aldo Leopold (Sand County Almanac) : "An innumerable host of actions and attitudes, comprising perhaps the bulk of all land relations, is determined by the land-user's tastes and predilections rather than by his purse."
In the caser of the mountain forests, this situation can be remedied in only one way (see Mabon '85). The public lands, and particularly the National Forests, should be reconstituted in a system of ecological preserves large enough to encompass most Valley and Ridge ecosystems. These preserves should include the small isolated Wilderness areas recently designated and all the unproductive timber lands of the mountain cores, and should connect with and extend along the intermountain mainstem rivers to provide the necessary habitat diversity and nutrient sources for a true wilderness fauna. Logging should be confined to lands not critical to wildlife and which, as determined by surveys, are suited to timber production. This means that consideration of bedrock geology should be given far more weight than at present to avoid rapid exhaustion of apparently fertile soils which occur over rocks of low nutrient availability.
Excluding the mountain forests, marginal agricultural lands-whether they occur in the foothills, intermountain valleys or in dissected terrain of the Great Valley-should be restored to natural areas and commercial forests. Although these lands cannot be profitably cropped or grazed under current socio-economic conditions, they are potential sites for forests more productive than virtually any mountain lands. For example, the northerly slopes of hills developed on the dolomitic limestone of the Cambrian Elbrook Formation may contain as many coexisting species of trees and shrubs as the richest mountain coves and flood plains, but in addition are prime sites for the valuable Black Walnut, Black Cherry and Yellow Locust which seldom do well in the mountains. Similar rich sites also occur in other valley formations.
Such sites, hospitable to tree growth as they are, also have their own communities and habitats for other plants which differ from those of the mountains. In their fertile soils, understory and ground cover is rich and varied so that walking may be impeded by breast-high Jewelweed, towering Black Cohosh and other herbaceous plants. Unusual communities also exist at the local level, as at the bases of some hills where seeps give rise to open cattail marshes and meadows of wet prairie flora more characteristic of glaciated terrain.
The large tracts of public land (National Forests, state parks and wildlife management areas) that already exist in the mountains of the Valley and Ridge Province favor the establishment of true ecological preserves, since they are large enough to act effectively as biologic reservoirs and escape refuges as well as water and air quality buffers for the entire region. However, they need to be integrated and connected by communication corridors and connected to a system of similar preserves in the Blue Ridge Province to the east, including Shenandoah National Park. This could be accomplished by a mesh of transecting Great Valley Preserves utilizing the hilly dissected valley terrain and riparian areas wherever possible. Such an integrated system of preserves-as suggested by Reed Noss for all of Florida (Mabon '85 issue) -would satisfy the natural attraction of wildlife for the richer and more diverse valley habitats as well as provide regional communication and gene flow that has been suppressed since the settlement period began.
The restoration and protection of the eastern wilderness and the establishment of a system of corridor-linked preserves will require an innovative approach beyond anything accomplished to date, since large amounts of private lands are involved. It is time we stop neglecting these private lands. Fortunately pioneering efforts by such private organizations as The Nature Conservancy point the way in which this may be done. And it is already being done; for example, in the Sierra Madre of Chiapas, Mexico, PRONATURA, a private Mexican group similar to the Conservancy, is establishing an archipelago of island habitats connected by natural area corridors (The Nature Conservancy News, V36, p13, 1986). In the U S a consortium of public agencies and private organizations have begun the restoration of natural areas in south Florida (Save Our Everglades, Second Anniversary Report Card, State of Florida, Aug. 9, 1985), which is a start toward the plan of Noss.
Experience indicates that significant riparian corridors and natural areas can be protected by easements and even voluntary pledges. When outright acquisition of land is necessary, the bludgeon of condemnation should be replaced by willing-seller, willing-buyer sales or retention of "life estates," although zoning restraints might be required in some cases. Tax incentives, such as graded rates that match use intensiveness, should be adopted. There should, however, be safeguards against such abuses as overgrazing-which is a consequence of Virginia's otherwise excellent land use law, due to an excessively high livestock head per acre requirement. The proposed preserve system might be built upon something like the recently enacted legislation which encourages farmers to reclaim up to 45 million acres nationally by conversion to natural vegetation. Much Valley and Ridge land will likely qualify for this program.
Since the industrial revolution began, the technological juggernaut has destroyed so much wilderness and natural area that planetary life support systems are threatened-so much so that protecting the unspoiled remainder is not enough. To save our planet, much degraded land must be reclaimed and restored (a point of view pioneered by Earth First! founders ), Our technology must be radically redesigned from a plan of conquest and exploitation to one of accommodation. We must stop thinking of nature as merely worthy of preservation as museum-like islands in a sea of developed land and begin to reestablish the continuous living wilderness in which technology is restrained and subordinate. In south Florida something approaching this process, supported by decades of accumulating scientific evidence, is underway and is recognized as the only means of salvation of a culture that once placed all its trust in the technology of "water management." Florida is a place where a crisis was reached first; but crises in other areas, such as the Great Lakes and Great Salt Lake, are coming fast. Changes in land use practices can not only avert catastrophe, but can bring a wide range of benefits. Such conclusions have even been recognized in the farm legislation cited earlier.
Following Earth First! philosophy, we need to view the entire country's developed land as a potential resource waiting to be reintegrated with nature as a plenum of interpenetrating natural areas and adapted and minimal technologic artifacts. The process occurring in south Florida must be extended from suitable regional loci of a variety of remnant ecosystems which should eventually be mutually linked to existing wilderness areas nationwide. The Valley and Ridge represents one such locus that is particularly suitable because of its still-ample natural assets as well as its present lack of designated nature preserves. And what could be more appropriate, in that very region where western man first had the vision of continental conquest, than to replace that illusory vision with one of the harmonious wilderness returning?
