06/08/2026
NCTC Conservation Lecture Series!
On Thursday, June 25, at 7:00 pm, author Andrew Moore will present his new book The Beasts of the East - The Fall and Rise of America’s Eastern Wilderness, at the National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, WV.
Before skyscrapers and smokestacks rose across the eastern U.S., elk, bison, wolves, and cougars roamed. Typically imagined as icons of the West, these large mammals are in fact native to what was once a kind of Eden—towering forests in the Northeast, rolling prairies in the Midwest, and cypress swamps in the Deep South. But, in mere decades, industrialization and unregulated hunting brought these emblems of the East to the precipice of extinction.
Now, eastern wildlife are staging an unlikely comeback. Herds of bison graze on Illinois prairies, red wolves lurk in North Carolina’s coastal marshes, and abandoned coal mines in Kentucky are now home to thousands of elk. Such recovery promises to restore balance to eastern ecosystems and return one of the most biodiverse regions in the world to its former luster—but not without challenges.
In The Beasts of the East, we follow environmental writer and James Beard Award finalist Andrew Moore as he meets conservationists, hunters, biologists, and nature lovers as they confront herculean challenges: How can we enable wildlife migration in the midst of suburban sprawl? Are these success stories viable in the long-term? When humans and wildlife come in close contact, how do we define wilderness?
Andrew Moore is the author of Pawpaw: In Search of America's Forgotten Fruit, which was a James Beard Foundation Book Award finalist in Writing and Literature. Pawpaw was featured on PBS News Hour and in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Saveur, The Washington Post, and more. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and The Daily Yonder. He lives in Pittsburgh.
This public lecture will be held in the Byrd Auditorium at the National Conservation Training Center, 698 Conservation Way, Shepherdstown, WV 25443.
Doors open at 6:30 PM.
Program begins at 7:00 PM.
This event is free and open to the public. All are welcome!
To register for the upcoming program, please email: [email protected].
Be sure to include the program date in the subject or memo line, and list ALL the names of all attending adults in the body of your message. Children’s names are not required.
This lecture will be recorded and available online July 1 at: https://www.youtube.com//streams
For more information, please contact [email protected].
The Friends of the National Conservation Training Center sponsors these programs. The Friends are a non-profit 501(c)3 organization and your donations are tax deductible.
FRIENDS OF THE NATIONAL CONSERVATION TRAINING CENTER
PO BOX 1452, SHEPHERDSTOWN, WV 25443
WWW.FRIENDSOFNCTC.ORG | [email protected]
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