EDITOR'S NOTE: This story originally appeared in our our July/August 1993 issue. It is being presented again here as part of our 30th Anniversary celebration.
The Southern Appalachian regions of North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia contain about 2,500 acres of "balds"-high, open meadows along the ridges of mountain peaks. How they got there and how to keep them there have become hot topics in recent years.
Randy Johnson
Six years ago, a conference weighed the future of the Southern Appalachian Balds, those unexplained, meadow-covered mountaintops that line the Appalachian Trail near Roan Mountain, Tenn., and elsewhere in the Southern Appalachians.
“The alarms really went off at that meeting.” says Paul Bradley, district ranger for the area that includes balds on Hump. Yellow and Roan Mountains, a spectacular stretch of the meadows on the North Carolina/Tennessee border near Boone, N.C.
“Scientists, forest service officials and the public realized that if we didn't start doing something immediately, we'd lose the balds,” Bradley says. "Our problems up there are just about ready to shift into high gear.”
The statistics are ominous. Of 2,500 acres of balds on and near the summits mentioned above, 1,641 acres have started growing up in trees and briars within the last five years. Since the alarm was sounded, the forest service has used mowing as a “stopgap measure," says Bradley. "But we've known all along that we needed to take a long-term look at the problem."
That longer look, including tentative research efforts, is about to bear fruit. Under the Forest Land Management Plan that coordinates the forest's multiple uses. Bradley was directed to evaluate the "environmental sensitivity and effectiveness of the tools we have to keep the balds open, and then propose a course of action for the next five years.''
The program that results could determine whether the scenic, alpine-like views of the Appalachian Trail will remain for future generations. The existence of the balds is also a key to the survival of more than 30 endangered and threatened species that grow on the ridgetop between Roan Mountain and Elk Park. Those plants, among them Gray's lily, wretched sedge and Roan Mountain bluet, constitute the greatest concentration of rare plants in the Southern Appalachians.
The decision to "save the balds," and the methods that will likely be used, is an ironic effort to thwart Mother Nature's seemingly natural desire to turn the balds back to forest. The story of how and why the balds will be protected touches the heart of man's delicate dance with nature.
Despite the desire of foresters and citizens to protect endangered plants on the meadows, the re-forestation of the balds is a natural process that finds blackberries, hawthornes and spruces coming to take over. Nature, it seems, simply doesn't care whether the balds stay or go.
“Of course, there aren't any undesirable species, from an ecological standpoint," says Bradley.
Nevertheless, man has, or is about to make the decision to preserve the balds at the expense of those invading species. With a diverse-list of tools, the forest service will maintain 1,000 acres of balds, and reclaim another 1,600 acres where trees, shrubs and briars are encroaching.
No one knows how the balds were formed, but Bradley and scientists say the fact that they are growing up with new vegetation suggests that they are not naturally bare of trees.
Theories include speculation that a major fire claimed the trees. That certainly is how the balds in North Carolina's Shining Rock Wilderness Area were formed. Massive clearcutting after the turn of the century denuded the landscape. The "slash" caught fire and treeless mountaintops are the result.
Much the same series of events claimed the trees on Mount Rogers, Virginia's highest peak. Those balds cover the Elk Garden Gap area, and meadows adjoining Grayson Highlands State Park. The Appalachian Trail winds through both scenic areas.
District ranger Bradley says the revegetation of the balds may be accelerating because grazing ended 20 years ago when the forest service acquired the land. At the time, grazing was considered incompatible with use of the Appalachian Trail.
Not so ironically, grazing is at the top of the list of methods now being considered to keep the balds covered with grasses and sedges. Up to now, volunteer trail crews from the Appalachian Trail Conference have used blade-equipped weed-eaters to mow back the brush.
But the vegetation just grows back, and budgets are inadequate to make mowing a long-term solution.
Grazing, on the other hand, has been successful. On Yellow Mountain, cattle have been grazing for years on land owned by the Nature Conservancy.
On Mount Rogers, in Virginia, wild ponies roam and graze at will across the bald peaks, as at Chincoteague, Va., where selected ponies swim from a barrier island to shore to be auctioned off in the fall.
Despite a herd of 90, Mount Rogers' foresters say the ponies probably have little impact on keeping the balds open. On Yellow Mountain, Bradley says the cattle have had an impact of their own, including the spreading of what some people refer to as '·meadow muffins.”
Since neither ponies or cows eat encroaching vegetation like briars, Bradley says the forest service will likely decide in favor of using other animals to eat the balds out of their problem.
On Mount Rogers, sheep were grazed experimentally this summer. On the Roan Mountain area, goats were tried.
Besides grazing, the balds maintenance plan now underway is likely to continue hand and mechanical mowing, where appropriate, and add "limited use of fire and herbicides,” says Bradley.
The Forest Plan states explicitly that the Southern Balds will be preserved.
"There's no doubt about it,'' admits Bradley. “We are definitely altering the natural succession. If the area was designated Wilderness, what we're proposing would be inappropriate. This is an anthropocentric approach-oriented around man's wishes. If we were taking a biocentric perspective, we'd let Mother Nature do what she wants. In this case, man has made the decision that nature needs to be controlled