Outdoor Classroom: Field Visits With Students from Highlands Biological Station

By Chattooga Conservancy Articles News September 27, 2026

Over the past couple of months, Chattooga Conservancy staff had the privilege of joining two different field days with students from the Highlands Biological Station. Read our event summaries below. Thank you to everyone who participated!

Conservation Biology Class Field Day

On July 28th, Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) attorneys joined Chattooga Conservancy staff for a field day and classroom session with the Highlands Biological Station’s summer Conservation Biology course. The focus was on management of our national forests, both locally and through current executive orders and federal policies. We led the group to view a logged forest stand in the sensitive Slick Rock area off the Bull Pen Road (NC), which was cut as part of the controversial Southside Project in the Nantahala Ranger District. While viewing the aftermath of the logging, we discussed our observations compared to the Forest Service’s stated goals as approved in their paperwork. All agreed that the sparse, damaged, and predominantly maple and locust “leave trees” and other visible negative impacts were far from the Forest Service’s “desired future conditions” and illustrated the harsh impacts of the heavy-handed logging pushed through by the Southside Project.For comparison, we also visited an old-growth forest accessed by the Ellicott Rock trail from the Ammons Branch campground (NC). The rich, multilayered, and biologically diverse native forest displayed a bounty of thriving species and habitats characteristic of the temperate rainforest of the Chattooga headwaters.Following the field trip, SELC attorneys led a classroom session and laid out the challenging landscape presented by the current, full-scale attack on federal laws and policies that formerly safeguarded our environment. Topics discussed included radical changes to the National Environmental Policy Act, the bedrock foundation of many environmental protection provisions (including citizens’ right to know and comment), and the current proposal to rescind the Roadless Rule, etc. It was both a sobering discussion and an uplifting call to action, particularly as voiced by many students in the Conservation Biology class. We appreciated the opportunity to participate with partners at SELC in the Highlands Biological Station’s programs, to help support their mission to foster research, education, and conservation focused on the rich natural heritage of the southern Blue Ridge, a global biodiversity hotspot.

Image header: HBS Associate Director Jason Love and Chattooga Conservancy Executive Director Nicole Hayler speak to UNC-CH students beside the Chattooga River, on a microplastics sampling field visit to Raven’s Rock. Credit: Chattooga Conservancy

Microplastics Field Visit

On September 14th, Chattooga Conservancy staff had the opportunity to accompany Jason Love, Associate Director of the Highlands Biological Station, and his students to Raven’s Rock on Section IV of the Chattooga, where they collected samples for ongoing research on microplastic pollution in the Southern Appalachians. This research is being conducted by Love and his colleague Dr. Rada Petric, Director of the Highlands IE program with UNC Chapel Hill.

The trip was a part of the Highlands Field Site, a program offered by UNC Chapel Hill that gets undergraduate students out into the field for real, hands-on research with Highlands Biological Station staff. Their research—which focuses on sampling for microplastics in Appalachian watersheds by harvesting and testing invasive Asian Clams (Corbicula fluminea)—is a clear favorite among the students, who spent the day snorkeling for clams and swimming below Raven’s Rock.

Over a picnic lunch, Chattooga Conservancy Executive Director Nicole Hayler gave a talk on the natural and conservation history of the Chattooga River watershed and our organization’s work to protect it.

The students harvested more than ten clams, which were kept on ice to be brought back to the lab, where their contents will be dissolved, plated, and examined through a dissecting microscope for ultra-tiny plastic fibers, the most common form of microplastics in our rivers.

That’s because, unlike microplastic beads, shards, and “nurdles,” fibers tend to have a certain loft to them—they can be easily swept up into the atmosphere, where they get pushed around by storm systems and ultimately deposited into rivers and streams via rainfall. That means even the wildest and most pristine areas—areas like the National Wild & Scenic Chattooga River—can still be impacted by microplastic pollution.

Discussing timber harvest impacts from the Southside Project observed in the Slick Rock area (Nantahala National Forest) with the Conservation Biology Class. Credit: Jasmine Williams

Researchers like Jason Love, Dr. Petric, and the Highlands Field Site students are key to understanding the vastly complex challenges of human impacts on the earth, and we’re always happy to collaborate in the important work of the scientists and staff of the Highlands Biological Station. Chattooga Conservancy wishes the students a rigorous and rewarding rest of the semester at the Highlands Field Site!