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The Southern Blue Ridge Mountain Ecoregion has had a unique role through deep time in maintaining and generating biodiversity in all terrestrial and freshwater aquatic organism groups. Acting as a refugium through past climate changes, the Southern Blue Ridge has retained lineages that then expand out into and enrich the biota throughout eastern North America. We will explore the importance of this history, and the past and present conservation challenges and successes that have made this one of the most intact ecoregions in eastern North America. Along the way, we’ll explore examples of special habitats and organisms for which the Southern Blue Ridge has been critical: alpine, serpentine, temperate rainforests, vertical wetlands, cove forests, lampshade spiders, salamanders (giant, arboreal, and otherwise), pitcherplants, heaths, trilliums, and the list goes on!
Hurricane Helene brought historic destruction to the Southern Appalachian region. The unprecedented combination of extreme winds, catastrophic floods, and landslides resulted in impacts at a scale few ecology practitioners have ever experienced. Even after two years of work, recovery remains in its early stages and the many agencies, organizations and individual practitioners are in uncharted territory, grappling with difficult questions that have no clear answers. How do we:
Join Megan Sutton, Josh Kelly, and a panel of their peers as they engage in a facilitated session designed to encourage discussion and information-sharing from both the panel and the audience.Through a facilitated conversation, panelists will share ongoing lessons, competing management approaches, emerging science, and how collaboration is shaping recovery across one of North America's most biodiverse landscapes.
Conference attendees are invited to participate by sharing experiences, asking questions, and contributing experience-based learning.
Facilitators:
Panelists:
Join Wes Knapp, botanist and CEO, Center for Plant Conservation (CPC), and other renowned plant conservationists and advocates, as they present highlights from the last 250 years of plant conservation in the United States as the first step in considering the opportunities in the next 250 years. Success will require an examination of the status of plants today and how we got here and what their future looks like under climate change, extinction and fewer resources dedicated to their conservation. Collaboration, unique partnerships, and creative approaches driven by investments in botanical knowledge and stewardship will be necessary to succeed.
The panel will include diverse perspectives and expertise; including in situ (on-the-ground), ex situ (off-site), translocations and indigenous perspectives. In addition, panelists will offer insights from multiple sectors, including national, federal, state; along with policy and advocacy.
Panel:
This session will premiere an exclusive sneak peek of Plant People, a new documentary series featuring experts across the United States who devote their lives to native plants and ecosystems. Featuring several of your colleagues, this series is a portrait of people working at the forefront of conservation and restoration, and explores their profound connections with the plants and places they care for. At its heart, Plant People is a love story: an invitation to see native plants through the eyes of the people who know and love them deeply.
Currently in production, the series is anticipated for release in 2027. Join filmmakers Brady Holden and McKenna Asakawa of Holden Films for a first look and a behind-the-scenes glimpse into their creative process. Please refrain from recording during the premiere.
Support the people who manage our natural areas and protect biodiversity in perpetuity.