JaSal Morris wants to protect the Cherokee National Forest—and inspire minority youth to do the same.
In Puerto Rico in the early 1990s, just as the area was regenerating from the devastation of Hurricane Hugo, JaSal Morris spent his days atop a stunningly beautiful mountain in the only rainforest managed by the USDA Forest Service.
“You could find yourself in the clouds,” says Morris, 57, now forest supervisor for the Cherokee National Forest in Cleveland, Tennessee, where he lives with his wife, Sandra. “You could feel the mist of the clouds when you got up into higher elevations. It’s one of the places I treasure having the opportunity to work.”
From coastal South Carolina to the peaks of the Blue Ridge and the western grasslands, Morris treasures each step of his 33-year career with the Forest Service and the people he’s met along the way. One of the agency’s first Black administrators, he has, through hard work and a willingness to take on new challenges, become a role model for minority youth seeking to follow in his footsteps.
As a boy, Morris often played in the wooded areas behind his family’s rural home in Martinsville, Virginia. But it never crossed his mind to pursue a degree in wildlife or forestry; instead, he built on his various retail jobs and majored in business administration at the historically Black Saint Paul’s College in Lawrenceville, Virginia.
He joined the Forest Service in 1988, as a summer student in the budget department at George Washington National Forest. A year later, he was hired fulltime to procure contracts, manage information technology and handle human resources issues. The latter suited him especially well; he was, after all, a people person.
“In that side of the career, you start to see it all and you learn to deal with people as they are, with no preconceived notions. You get them as they come,” Morris says. “It was an interesting type of position. You never know what you’re going to get the next day.”
Back then, there were few Black forest supervisors. “At least I didn’t see them,” he says. “Over the years, that has changed. Our numbers have greatly improved as far as folks in leadership, but we always continue to strive for more.”
Morris soon left Virginia to work as a human resources specialist for the Forest Service in Mississippi, Puerto Rico, Alabama and Washington, D.C., then as an equal employment specialist in Atlanta before heading to South Carolina in 2001. For eight years, he served as administrative officer in the Francis Marion and Sumter national forests, where, among other things, he worked on civil rights issues, from diversity training and Equal Employment Opportunity issues to outreach in low-income communities.
Although most of his tasks kept him indoors, he made a point to get outside and mingle with his boots-on-the-ground colleagues, marking timber and measuring fish in the streams. “I wanted to understand, when I was going out and recruiting for the positions, what that meant other than just seeing some words on the paper.”
For 12 years starting in the early 1990s, Morris garnered a different type of firsthand experience with the Southern Region’s Type 1 Incident Management Team, handling logistics for professionals battling wildfires and assisting FEMA after hurricanes. Fire season kept him busy making sure firefighters in western and southern states had the supplies they needed, from water hoses and other equipment to showers and meals.
After a one-year detour to the Southern Research Station in Asheville, North Carolina, in 2010 Morris became second in command at the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest. As deputy forest supervisor, he not only dealt with budgets and human resources, but with recreational concerns and prescribed burning in the pine-forested north Georgia mountains and the central part of the state.
After nearly 25 years with the Forest Service, Morris finally reached the top of the management chain in 2012 when he assumed the post of forest supervisor for the linear, 656,000-acre Cherokee National Forest, the largest single tract of public land in Tennessee and home to more than 600 miles of trails and 500 miles of cold-water streams.
One of his goals is to bring back native animals, wildflowers and trees, such as the shortleaf pine, that have been eclipsed by invasive species. Another is strengthening partnerships and collaborations, including a recent one with other state agencies and shareholders to revive whitewater racing on the Ocoee River, site of the 1996 Summer Olympic canoe and kayak competition.
Another project close to his heart is introducing educational nature activities for underserved youth, such as snorkeling in the Conasauga River.
“It has more biodiversity in that stretch than some of your larger rivers out west,” Morris says. “There are a lot of darters, drums and other fish. When my nieces and nephews would come up for their spring or summer break [when they were little], we’d go out there.”
Helping kids appreciate their natural surroundings isn’t just fun, he notes. It’s essential.
“Even though I grew up in a rural area, even though I was out in the woods and down by the creek, it was just a place to play. I wasn’t really trying to understand the environment that I was in. I think it’s important now for our youth to be able to understand that water doesn’t come from the tap. In most cases, it’s coming from the national forest.”
It’s taken him a while to adjust to the top leadership role, he admits. “In most of the jobs I had, I was the advisor. In this position, I am the decision-maker. I had to learn to transition from advising to being advised, as well as learning the different issues here in Tennessee and the terrain.”
Morris encourages young people interested in forestry careers to think big.
“A lot of times, particularly African Americans are thinking about agriculture and they don’t want to return to that time [in history]. But there are great opportunities within the agency: wildlife biology, engineering. We can always use civil engineers. We’re always hiring new firefighters. That is a great career for folks that want to do something a little bit different, to see the country.
“Be open to being mobile,” he advises job-seeking youth. “Don’t limit yourself to one spot. The Forest Service is really focusing on having an organization that is diverse and inclusive that looks more like the America that we serve. And the only way that we can do that is to have a diversity of folks with an interest in serving their country through the Forest Service. If you want opportunities that can take you all over the country through your career, this is the place to be.”
JASAL MORRIS’S 3 (MAKE THAT 4) FAVORITE SPOTS IN THE CHEROKEE NATIONAL FOREST
- Bald River Falls, Tellico Ranger District. “Anytime I’m in that district, I make my way out there to the falls. That water is a beautiful sight. … The sound of water and watching water move is just something that I enjoy.”
- Ocoee Whitewater Center. “I like seeing the usage of that area, the whitewater rafting. A lot of people go there, and they get the drop [in the rapids] called Humongous. And when they do, they come flying out of the raft. … Sometimes I’ll go to the Whitewater Center, sit up on the second floor in a rocking chair, and see people out there rocking and taking a nap.”
- Paint Creek Corridor, Unaka Ranger District. “It’s a beautiful area with the river going through there. It gets a lot of camping and visitation.”
- Watauga Lake. “It’s just a beautiful open area near the Appalachian Trail.”
The story above first appeared in our July/August 2021 issue.
