Last call for all photographers! There’s only one month remaining till the close of the 8th annual Appalachian Mountain Photography Contest (AMPC).

Appalachian Voices is sponsoring one of the eight categories, called “Our Ecological Footprint,” which will document environmental impacts caused by human activities in Appalachia. There will be a $200 prize for the winning shot in this category.

Each photo costs $6.00 to enter and a portion of the proceeds from the competition are used to subsidize Student Outdoor Learning Expeditions (SOLE) at Appalachian State University. Students participating in SOLE trips spend extended time exploring rugged and remote destinations including New Zealand, Alaska, Fiji and Wales. To date, AMPC has contributed more than $10,000 to students participating in SOLE trips.

This is the final reminder- so don’t miss your chance to win part of $4,000 dollars in cash and prizes. Submissions are due Dec. 17, by 5:00 pm.

To see other categories and for more information, visit:
https://appvoices.org/calendar/ampc/

PNC Bank recently decided that funding mountaintop removal mining doesn’t go with their big green wall (the largest vertical green garden in North America). They recently joined a growing list of banks who have decided that it’s just not worth the public humiliation to bankroll the destruction of America’s oldest mountains for coal. Our friends at Rainforest Action Network have been actively engaged in a grassroots campaign to pressure banks from funding this destructive mining technique that has already destroyed over 500 mountains and over 2000 miles of streams.

An excerpt from PNC’s policy statement:

MTR is the subject of increasing regulatory and legislative scrutiny, with a focus on the permitting of MTR mines. While this extraction method is permitted, PNC will not provide funding to individual MTR projects, nor will PNC provide credit to coal producers whose primary extraction method is MTR.

RAN recently won a Benny Award from the Business Ethic Network for their Global Finance Campaign. Appalachian Voices won a award for playing a supporting role by providing them the data needed to identify their targets. GO TEAM!

Thirty-six organizations, including Appalachian Voices, have signed on to a letter supporting the addition of 404 species of aquatic wildlife to the endangered species act.

The letter, delivered to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was in support of a petition (pdf), submitted to Fish and Wildlife last spring by the Center for Biological Diversity and six other regional and national organizations, included aquatic, riparian and wetland species in the southeastern part of the country.

“Thanks to pollution, development, logging, poor agricultural practices, dams, mining, invasive species and other threats,” says the Center’s website, “extinction is looming for more than 28 percent of the region’s fishes, more than 48 percent of its crayfishes and more than 70 percent of its mussels.”

Twenty-nine percent of the petitioned species are threatened by coal mining and oil and gas development. The original petition (pdf) included a section on the affects of mountaintop removal (aka strip) mining on aquatic species (page 18-21).

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