No one questions the unique nature of the plateau and the surrounding mountains, a region of 19.4 million acres that is home to more endangered and threatened species than anywhere in the country outside California's Central Valley. Its canopy of oak, hickory, black gum and red maple trees shelters streams and rivers with the highest concentration of aquatic diversity in the continental United States, featuring 230 fish species and 65 types of crayfish. It is also a kind of salamander kingdom, with more than 50 species.
Middle Tennessee State University biology professor Brian Miller said the plateau's broad mix of terrain -- with warm and cool streams, forest, valleys and subterranean areas -- allows a range of species to thrive. "The diversity of habitat on the plateau is tremendous," Miller said. "It is a unique physiogeographic region."
Graden, whose company supplies some of The Washington Post's newsprint and co-owns a Canadian newsprint plant with The Post, says his firm recognizes the value of preserving the ecological value of the land it farms.
Bowater has launched a year-long study to survey land it owns that constitutes "an area for ecological diversity of unquestioned geological significance," he said. In June, it donated 610 of the 380,000 acres it owns in Tennessee to the state and protected another 3,100 acres from development.
But environmentalists say the ongoing conversion of traditional hardwood forest to pine, which is three times more profitable, depletes calcium from the soil, which snails, birds and other creatures need for nutrients, and also alters the canopy structure upon which many animals and plants depend.
According to University of the South biology professor David G. Haskell, local bird diversity declines by at least a third in pine forests, and the switch also undermines migration habitat for neotropical birds.
"We're losing one of the jewels in the crown for southern bird diversity," he said.
Using remote sensing technology as well as on-the-ground research to survey 600,000 acres, Haskell, Evans and other Sewanee professors concluded that between 1982 and 2003, 20 percent of the native hardwood forest in the area was eliminated and converted to other uses. This rate of loss accelerated in the past six years, they said, and is expected to continue.
Timber officials, individual foresters and some state officials question these findings. They point to two broader studies, one of which suggested in 2002 that urbanization poses a greater threat to southern forests than harvesting timber, and an ongoing federal survey that concluded that the ratio of Tennessee's hardwood to pine forest has remained stable over the past 20 years.
"I'm not concerned about the overall forested areas on the Cumberland Plateau," said Steve Scott, Tennessee's state forester. He added that at least a third of Tennessee's loggers take a state-sponsored course to learn sound management practices.
Graden said after years of planting pine in Tennessee, Bowater converts only a few hundred acres a year -- less than 1 percent of its holdings -- from native forest to pine.
Part of the controversy stems from the fact that Tennessee does not require loggers to obtain a permit or notify the state before clear-cutting land, so there is no accurate accounting of how much forest is cut and converted. Private landowners say they should be free to decide what happens to their property.
Paul Tallent, who owns 300 acres on the foot of the Cumberland Plateau and sells to Bowater, recently cut down 40 acres of pine and hardwood forest, and replanted it with pine so his children would be able to harvest it in 30 to 40 years.
"Pine grows so much faster," he said, adding that he still has five acres of hardwood. "It's a balancing act. There's no lack of wildlife around here."
But state Rep. Mike McDonald (D), who has tried unsuccessfully to pass legislation regulating industrial clear-cutting, said he is worried removing hardwoods would hurt the habitat and the state's tourist industry.
"We're losing the very thing that attracts people to our state, and that's hardwood forest," McDonald said. "They don't come to Tennessee to look at pine plantations."
