Some of the Alliance staff takes a portrait in April 2012 for a Citizen-Times profile article.
WNCA profiled in the Citizen-Times
April 2012
ASHEVILLE — It’s not just the occasional fights that break out among the four or five resident dogs in the WNC Alliance offices that complicate Julie Mayfield’s job.
While there is dog hair, toys and slobber to deal with, the real challenge is guiding and guarding the fate of Western North Carolina’s forests, rivers, lakes and land that weighs on Mayfield as executive director of the alliance, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year.
“Thirty years is a long time for any organization, particularly given the challenging economic times we’ve been in the past few years,” said Mayfield, an environmental attorney who four years ago took over leadership of one of the region’s oldest nonprofit environmental groups.
“The alliance has really come out of it quite well and stronger than we’ve been in a long time. That’s something to celebrate, especially with other environmental groups closing down.” Read more here.
WNCA profiled in the Smoky Mountain News
April 2012
Just in time for its 30th anniversary, the Western North Carolina Alliance one of the region’s most august environmental organizations is promising to reassert itself as a highly visible and prominent force in communities outside of Asheville.
To help fulfill that promise of renewed commitment the WNC Alliance will re-staff its offices in Franklin and Boone. In recent years the group has relied almost solely on volunteers to serve as its visible presence west and north of its Asheville headquarters. This is not to say WNC Alliance hasn’t been present at all in these communities; just less so than in the group’s glory days in the 1980s and 1990s.
WNC Alliance’s beginnings, in fact, are rooted in Macon County. The environmental group was the brainchild of Esther Cunningham, a Franklin resident who became incensed at the proposition that companies might be allowed to mine the national forests for oil and gas.
“She wrote letters, she organized, she spoke at hearings, she learned Forest Service appeal procedure,” said Bill Crawford of Macon County, who was one of the group’s earliest members. Read more here.
Historian Rob Neufeld recounts WNCA’s roots in the Citizen-Times
April 2012
Twenty-three years ago, April 15, was “Cut the Clearcutting!” day in Asheville. The demonstration and concert highlighted a long campaign to redirect U.S. Forest Service policy. Western North Carolina Alliance the movement’s organizer, just celebrated its 30th anniversary.
Kathryn Newfont, associate professor of history at Mars Hill College, has just published a book, “Blue Ridge Commons,” that tells the story of Cut the Clearcutting! and other successful efforts to wed environmentalism with the economic benefit of shared land.
WNCA, Newfont relates, “decoupled the issue of forest protection from the question of wilderness preservation and hitched it instead to widely shared concerns about the wooded mountain commons.” Read more here.
Josh Kelly publishes a guest commentary in the Citizen-Times
March 2012
Biologist Josh Kelly speaks out about protecting our unique watershed in the Citizen-Times. Read more here.
Julie Mayfield is featured in Verve magazine
February 2012
WNCA Executive Director Julie Mayfield speaks about how a healthy environment is vital to a healthy economy. See the article here.
Julie Mayfield is featured in May’s Philanthropy Journal
October 30th, 2011
WNCA Executive Director Julie Mayfield speaks about how the economic recession has effected the operation of Western North Carolina Alliance since her arrival in 2008. To read the entire article, click here.
WNCA Featured in State-wide Non-profit Publication
October 30th, 2011
WNCA continues to catch the eye of state-wide organizations. Recently our efforts to collaborate with other Asheville-headquartered environmental groups were noted in the North Carolina Center for Non-profits spring issue, Common Ground. [more]