Hurricane Helene was really TWO disasters.  The first was the hurricane itself — lives lost, houses damaged, infrastructure destroyed.  The second is economic — livelihoods lost, businesses closed, communities that count on National Forest now struggling to hold on.  Before Helene, National Forest, with its beautiful rivers and trails, was the cornerstone of a 5 billion dollar outdoor recreation economy in the counties that Wild South serves.  Now rivers are full of trash, and trails are lost to landslide or too eroded and dangerous to hike.  That means continued damage in the wild places we all love, and it means continued economic hardship in our mountain communities.

Your support will make a real difference to real places and real people.  This is a time when we all appreciate all over again — as if we'd never thought about it before — the importance of the South's wild places to ourselves and others.