THE RIVER RUNS ON follows conservationists throughout southern Appalachia as they struggle to manage two of the most imp | dG1fUFkxU1I4azJWQ3M
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 (birds chirping)
00:03 In the eyes of native people,
00:05 it was the sand to do nothing with the landscape.
00:07 You engage, you exchange that energy.
00:10 If you are gonna sit back and think
00:14 that these forested areas are just gonna all of a sudden
00:18 do something magical without you being engaged in them,
00:22 you're wrong.
00:23 (gentle music)
00:27 (water rushing)
00:30 I think some people assume that our public lands
00:40 are just protected and that no one can go in and change them
00:43 and that's not true.
00:44 Like right now, there's so many threats to public land,
00:48 including large-scale logging or natural gas pipelines
00:52 that are being cut through these untouched wilderness areas
00:55 or natural areas.
00:57 (gentle music)
00:59 100 years ago, there wasn't any effort given
01:00 to what's gonna be the future forest here.
01:02 Now we're taking a look, okay, now we've inherited this,
01:05 how are we gonna take this
01:06 and how are we gonna make this better for our kids?
01:08 How do we manage recreation in a sustainable way?
01:13 How do we address issues like climate change
01:16 and all the stressors that provides on invasive species
01:19 and how do we work together around that development pressure
01:23 and what that puts on the national forest?
01:26 Those are societal challenges.
01:28 - This planet was fine without us
01:32 for a long, long, long, long time.
01:35 This continent was fine without us for millions of years.
01:38 So to think we need to manage every single acre
01:41 is just stupidity.
01:42 - The Nantahala Pisgah is the biggest unit of public land
01:49 in the Southern Blue Ridge,
01:50 which is perhaps the world's best preserved
01:54 temperate hardwood forest.
01:56 And so if you lose the best of the best,
01:59 then what do you have left?
02:00 (upbeat music)
02:03 (water flowing)
02:06 (upbeat music)
02:08 (water flowing)
02:11 (water splashing)