Lost Woods



— Alexandra Wisner, Associate Director, the Rachel Carson Council; Rachel Radvany and Noah Schaffir, Rachel Carson Council Stanback Interns (Duke University).

The Lost Woods interactive data map grows out of the Rachel Carson Council’s (RCC) ongoing campaign against woody biomass as an energy source; it is not renewable, clean, carbon neutral, or economically viable. Lost Woods expands and enhances the case against biomass laid out in depth in the comprehensive RCC reports Clear Cut and Bad Business.

The map is designed to allow reporters, academics, policy makers and, above all, citizen activists and their organizations to gain easy access to the vast amounts of detailed information they need to reveal the growing impact, influence and consequences of the woody biomass industry.

The data and information in Lost Woods can be displayed in many forms including maps, charts, graphs, and photographs. Wood pellet production plants and woody biomass burning facilities have long been known to have adverse impacts far beyond the air pollution they release and their devastating contribution to global climate change.  But, as can be clearly seen in the mapping of the 33 states where facilities are located, they are not distributed evenly, or neutrally, across the nation. They are most frequently built in low-income communities of color, forcing them to bear the brunt of negative impacts.

To find information about state-wide trends, click on the state capitals; to examine nationwide trends and sourcing information, click on the icon for Washington, DC. More data can be found as you click through individual icons and symbols. Charts and other graphics displayed can be clicked on to copy, share, or otherwise use them.

For one example of the many available, the map on the right quickly shows that woody biomass facilities are placed not only in low-income communities, but those with lower education levels. Demographic data on a single facility can also show vividly that it is located in an area with disproportionate minority populations, as in the pie chart above for the Enviva Pellets Hamlet, LLC production plant in Rockingham, North Carolina. The percentage of non-white population, 55.3% far exceeds both the U.S. percentage of 39.6% and the state percentage of 37.4%.

“Behind this is the wonderful, deep, dark woodland – a cathedral of stillness and peace. Spruce and fir, some hemlock, some hardwoods along the edges…It is a living museum of mosses and lichens which in some places form a carpet many inches deep…It is a treasure of a place to which I have lost my heart completely…I have had many precious moments in these woods…and as I walked there the feeling became overwhelming that something must be done.”

— Rachel Carson writing on her determination to preserve what she called “The Lost Woods” on the Maine Coast. The woodlands are now protected as part of the Boothbay Regional Land Trust.


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