Keepers of the Blue Ridge

We heard yesterday from an artist in Carolina, USA, who is part of the group who run www.keepersoftheblueridge.com. This website is about protecting the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina from the destruction caused by commercial wind development.(More about the artist to come)

One of our favourite quotes comes from John Muir, the founder of the National Parks Movement. He was born in Scotland but emigrated to America, where he devoted his life to protecting the wilderness. He said:

"Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken over-civilised people are beginning to find that wilderness is a necessity and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life."


Like Marion Chapman in Australia, Tom Hutton in Mid Wales, Karl Pipes in Argyll, to name a few of our artists who have been highlighted recently, here is another artist fighting to preserve a wilderness from the depredations of an industry that dares to call itself "Green". Do look at the above website, with photographs of some wonderful mountain ranges - and make a special point if you can of looking at this page which gives examples of habitat destruction following the building of a wind farm.