Wild South seeks a congressional designation to establish the Grandfather National Scenic Area, which would permanently protect 25,000 acres of forest comprising the viewsheds of Blowing Rock and Grandfather Mountain.

The concept for the Grandfather National Scenic Area (GNSA) was borne from an ill-conceived Forest Service logging project in the Pisgah National Forest one mile south of Blowing Rock, NC. Following a series of controversial clearcuts in the late 1980s, USFS promised the community that they would not log in the area again. Lacking institutional memory, however, the agency caught the community off guard when they returned in February 2006 with plans to log the beloved Globe Forest yet again. The Forest Service exacerbated the problem when they neglected to inform the community, which learned about the project only after Wild South brought it to their attention in August 2006—one week before the comment period closed.

What followed was an unprecedented response from the community--over 1,800 citizens submitted comments to the agency opposing the project. The Blowing Rock Town Council followed suit and called for the creation of the Grandfather National Scenic Area in a unanimous resolution. Boone's City Council and the Watauga County Commission also passed similar unanimous resolutions. The controversy attracted an immense amount of media attention, from Winston-Salem and Raleigh to Charlotte and Asheville.

Working with the community, Wild South and the Southern Environmental Law Center helped draft proposed language for a bill that would set aside 25,500 acres of Pisgah National Forest as a National Scenic Area.

The proposed Grandfather National Scenic Area lies across the 5th and 10th Congressional Districts, with the majority of the area found in Caldwell and Avery Counties. Economists agree that the Grandfather National Scenic Area designation, while costing taxpayers nothing, would provide a significant boost to the local economy.