Appalachian Headwaters

06/05/2026

Please join us for a special screening and the West Virginia debut of the documentary VS GOLIATH: APPALACHIA - Debut WV Screening, part of the award-winning series, at 7:00 PM on Thursday, June 11th at The Ritz Theatre - Cinema & Performing Arts, located on 211 Ballengee St, historic Hinton, WV.

An army veteran, a disabled educator/farmer, an apple grower, a small business owner and indigenous leaders enlist in the battle against a massive gas pipeline that cuts through their community in the mountains of Appalachia. They are joined by neighbors near and far in a showdown against a shadowy corporation and some of the nation’s most powerful politicians. Among those are citizens from West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina, including many of you and your friends and neighbors who all came together to resist the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

Executive Produced by Award-Winning Actor & Director Don Cheadle and the Solutions Project, the Equation Campaign and Fossil Free Media and Produced by Tikkun Olam Productions.

Pre-show social begins at 6:00 PM and the film starts at 7PM, with a short discussion to follow featuring filmmakers and special guests from the front lines in the fight against the Mountain Valley Pipeline and MVP Southgate.

Hosted by the Protect Our Water Heritage Rights Coalition, Summers County Residents Against the Pipeline (SCRAP), West Virginia Rivers Coalition, Preserve Monroe, Indian Creek Watershed Association, Greenbrier Watershed, West Virginia Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, Christians for the Mountains, The Border Conservancy, and ARTivism Virginia

06/04/2026

new summer, new interns! 🌱

Meet Connor, Allison, and Reagan, the new interns comprising of Field Team 1. Take a scroll through to meet our team as they conducted an early-morning bird point count survey, which is a pretty fancy way of saying they listened and looked for birds in ten minute intervals at different sites!

This protocol was conducted in tandem with Field Team Two, who you’ll meet next week! Stay tuned!

06/03/2026

Headwaters Wood Thrush Park will be open to the public this Saturday, come walk the trails, grab a native plant at the Greenhouse, and attend an educational talk!

06/01/2026

05/29/2026

Thank you to Jacob Blandford for giving a very informative Green Drinks last night on the Appalachian Mountains and wildlife movement! Thanks to everyone who came out, and big thanks to for hosting!

05/28/2026

It’s turtle season ya’ll!!

ALL of our native turtles, like these terrestrial (land) woodland box turtle, and our aquatic turtles like snapping turtles, sliders, musk, are out and about! More active than usual and very likely trying to cross a road near you!

This wet, warm weather is the perfect combo for female turtles to become active and begin their travel to nesting sites. Most of the turtles you see crossing roads are mommas trying to go back to a nest site to lay eggs!!

Please be cautious while driving! If it’s safe to do so, stop and move the turtle across the road in the direction it is headed. NEVER remove a turtle from its habitat and relocate it. Turtles will, quite literally die trying to get back to their home range, which is generally not very big. Moving them down the road, to your yard, or to a park almost certainly will result in a very disoriented turtle who will likely die trying to get back home.

Never paint or mark on a turtles shell! Turtles rely on their shells to absorb sunlight, as cold blooded animals it’s how they regulate their internal body temperature. Painting or coloring a shell results in the turtle not being able to properly regulate its temp, and they can absorb toxins from paint into their bodies from their shells.

Turtles and their shells are completely attached! Not like say, a hermit crab, which can change shells throughout its life if one is a better fit.

Turtles, especially woodland box turtles, are declining quickly across much of their range due to habitat loss, road mortalities, and people removing them from the wild for the ILLEGAL pet trade.

Please look out for these little guys, it takes many of them 6-8 years to be able to reach sexual maturity to reproduce, and they are a sensitive species—but quite important for ecosystems. Did you know woodland box turtles play a@pretty crucial role in the spread of our gorgeous native spring mayapple flowers? They eat the fruits and spread the seeds across the forest!

Thanks for caring about our unique native turtles!
—Dr. Collins

05/28/2026

Saturday! Weathers looking good for it!

RESCHEDULED! We have decided to reschedule our Botany Walk to Saturday, May 30th due to the forecast of rain this weekend.