By Davic Lillard
West Virginia was once a leading producer of maple syrup. Today, even though 80 percent of the Mountain State is covered with hardwoods—about 110,000 square miles of them—West Virginia barely registers in syrup production. Neal Super’s Mountain State Maple is starting a homegrown sugarin’ renaissance here in the relative flatlands of Jefferson County. [...]

By Lyn Widmyer
I consider myself an environmentalist with one major exception: brown marmorated stink bugs. I don’t care about the circle of life and ecological balance when it comes to these marauders. I say kill them all.
I am like the Terminator when it comes to brown stink bugs. The difference is I am armed with [...]

by Jeff Feldman
I sat engrossed in Coal Country during last month’s American Conservation Film Festival in Shepherdstown. The film documents a range of perspectives on the issue of surface mining for coal in Appalachia, what many have come to call mountaintop removal. Interviews and footage depict miners expressing pride in their heritage; locals struggling to [...]

By Glenn Scherer and David Lillard
When our economy tanked last year, politicians told us that our nation’s financial institutions were “too big to fail,” and the federal government immediately proceeded to bail out the banks. Now, as world leaders prepare for a critically important climate summit in Copenhagen, we need to ask: Is Earth too [...]

Two tree sitters perched 80-foot above the forest floor, protesting mountaintop removal.
Two Edwight, W.Va.  tree sitters, Nick Stocks and Laura Steepleton, came down from their 80-foot tulip poplar perches this afternoon and were taken into State Police custody.  They have been preventing more blasting from rocking the homes of Pettry Bottom.  They have both been [...]