Director of the Southern Appalachian Wilderness Stewards (SAWS) program, Bill Hodge, announced today that the coverage area for SAWS programming will expand to include the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests in Virginia. The new program area will launch as SAWS partners with the USFS to employee seasonal Wilderness Rangers to conduct solitude monitoring in designated Wilderness areas in the fall of 2013 and spring of 2014.
Future plans in Virginia include an expansion of SAWS Trail Crew efforts and training programs.
With the addition of these two National Forests, the SAWS footprint has grown to include 45 designated Wilderness areas (just under 400,000 acres) in five southeastern states.