Highways are among the most significant barriers to wildlife movement in the eastern United States, fragmenting habitat, elevating road mortality, and weakening wildlife populations that depend on landscape-scale connectivity. Few corridors illustrate this challenge and the opportunity to address it more clearly than I-40 through North Carolina’s Pigeon River Gorge (PRG). The gorge is a primary linkage between the Pisgah National Forest and Great Smoky Mountains National Park and a critical movement corridor for black bears, elk, white-tailed deer, and dozens of other species. Since 2018, the Safe Passage Coalition has sustained wildlife connectivity research programs along this corridor, generating camera-trap and telemetry data that are unique in the region for their depth, duration, and direct focus on infrastructure solutions. Hurricane Helene’s catastrophic damage to I-40 in 2024 transformed that research from background context into urgent, time-sensitive advocacy, making the coalition’s work a case study in how science engages infrastructure planning at a moment of crisis.
Safe Passage is a partnership of nearly 100 professionals from more than 20 local, state, tribal, and federal agencies, land management organizations, and nonprofit partners. The coalition’s research has documented crossing rates, road mortality hotspots, and the effectiveness of existing structures for target species, translating eight years of field data into specific, defensible recommendations for crossing site prioritization and structure design. That research is the foundation of Safe Passage’s advocacy and the source of its credibility in agency conversations where scientific rigor is a necessity.
This symposium presents Safe Passage’s program as a case study in long-term corridor research, multi-stakeholder coalition building, and science-based infrastructure advocacy. The first session establishes the scientific and organizational foundation: the research methodology and key findings from field monitoring, and the coalition model that leverages advocacy. Presenters will address how Safe Passage was built across agencies and organizations, how research credibility has shaped engagement with transportation partners, and how the program has maintained momentum.
The second session addresses the policy and practice dimensions. Presenters will examine how Safe Passage has navigated federal funding frameworks, state legislative processes, and multi-agency coordination to advance wildlife connectivity commitments within a complex infrastructure planning landscape. The session also looks outward: what the PRG corridor’s eight years of data reveals for practitioners working in other high-priority corridors across the region. A 30-minute facilitated discussion closes the symposium with structured reflection on the conditions necessary to replicate the Safe Passage approach, the policy levers most likely to move transportation agencies, and the tools practitioners need to do this work effectively.
The Pigeon River Gorge is one of the most studied and most consequential wildlife corridors in the eastern United States. Safe Passage’s story is both a specific case study and a practical model for the work that natural areas professionals across the region need to be doing now.
Organizers: Ben Prater, Tracy Davids, and Jeff Hunter
Southern Appalachian mountain bogs are insular, groundwater-dependent ecosystems supporting rare plant communities and species such as the federally listed bog turtle. These systems provide critical ecosystem services, including water regulation, carbon storage, and cultural value. Increasing climate variability—including high-intensity storms (e.g., Hurricane Helene), extreme precipitation, wildfire impacts, and prolonged drought—has exposed vulnerabilities in these systems and challenged traditional restoration paradigms.
This symposium synthesizes lessons from recent extreme events and collaborative discussions within the Bog Learning Network (BLN), a consortium of scientists and land managers working to advance the restoration and management of Southern Appalachian bogs. Together, these efforts explore adaptive, scalable resilience strategies while identifying priority needs for data, tools, and cross-site coordination. Presentations will address hydrologic response, sediment and nutrient impacts, upstream infrastructure redesign, stream and wetland restoration, beaver-mediated buffering, seed banking, and GIS-based prioritization frameworks, with an emphasis on actionable and transferable management approaches.
A facilitated discussion will engage practitioners in identifying priority actions, knowledge gaps, and opportunities for coordination across sites and states to strengthen climate resilience in these small, isolated wetlands. Outcomes will inform a forthcoming Natural Areas Association Journal article and BLN’s future coordination efforts. This session will invite NAC participants to contribute to a growing cross-regional effort and to apply these approaches to similar small, groundwater-dependent systems, advancing long-term ecological and community resilience.
Organizers: Carrie Radcliffe
This symposium highlights the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ leadership in stewarding culturally significant plants and ecosystems through Indigenous Science and collaborative partnerships. Presenters from the Tribe, federal agencies, state extension programs, nonprofits, and land trusts will share initiatives involving plants central to Cherokee foodways, dyes, and basketry, along with early efforts to revitalize cultural fire practices. Attendees will gain practical insights into respectful, relationship-based stewardship that advances Tribal priorities while strengthening natural areas management.
Organizers: Michelle Baumflek
Good conservation creates quality outdoor recreation and quality outdoor recreation experiences drive the desire for improved conservation. It's a mutually beneficial relationship to be taken advantage of strategically and opportunistically. This symposium seeks to provide positive examples of this relationship with presentations showing specific successful projects, programs, and partnerships. Then the discussion will move toward examples of organizations with missions that relate to conservation recreation to stimulate some mindset development fostering new approaches and possible new partners to natural area conservation.
This symposium will develop the outdoor recreation and conservation relationship by providing positive examples of projects, programs, and partners. The symposium begins with specific local projects and moves into higher level programmatic relationship possibilities through examples of partners with related causes that might be mutually beneficial for natural area management.
Organizers: Darrell Bowman and Roger McCoy
Hosted by Esri in partnership with the Natural Areas Association, this symposium covers end-to-end invasive species management with GIS, from detection and mapping to treatment tracking, monitoring outcomes, reporting impact, and collaboration with partners. Participants will learn from peers and partners applying GIS to real-world invasive species workflows. The symposium will conclude with a demonstration of Esri’s new Invasive Vegetation Management ArcGIS Solution, followed by discussion and Q&A to generate feedback for future development. Attend or participate to learn, connect, and provide feedback to guide future solutions!
Organizers: Sunny Fleming, Esri
This symposium will provide an array of topics that will speak to regional and national issues surrounding the loss of old-growth forests and potential for recovery.
Organizers: Sarah Adloo, OGFN
Support the people who manage our natural areas and protect biodiversity in perpetuity.
