The vision for Friends of Puskus

Mission

Friends of Puskus exists to take care of the Holly Springs National Forest. We are a community group organizing to help the U.S. Forest Service manage this community asset. By our shared engagement in the forest's care, the local communities connected to the forest will have a collective interest in the future of the forest. We are a friend of the Holly Springs National Forest, and see our work as a group of citizens unaffiliated with the U.S. Forest Service. In the future, we hope to participate in the Shared Stewardship program.

This is an idea created by displaced Mississippian Sam McAlilly, but I need your help. This is a community effort. I'm envisioning a group of people who all have an interest in the forest, whether they live near the forest or live in a town nearby but cherish the resource. This is a multi-stakeholder group organized for the public to participate in caring for the forest, but we also want to include conservation and land management professionals.

We need all forest stakeholders, which can roughly be categorized like:

1. Hikers, hunters, campers, bikers, fishers, and other people who use the forest for outdoor recreation
2. Naturalists, nature-based educators, conservation and sustainability professionals, etc
3. Foresters, loggers, current and former National Forest Service employees, etc
4. Nearby landowners, locals who sometimes enjoy the forest, local institutions and organizations, people with business interests in the area, etc

Friends of Puskus is based out of Oxford, but we plan to include other communities that are connected to the forest.

Our Approach

We hope to collaborate with the Forest Service as a member of their Shared Stewardship program. We are open to any and all public or private collaborations where our missions are aligned. We are starting small with group volunteering, but have a greater vision we are working towards.

1. Group volunteering

This is standard stewardship work for public lands. This is more common out west. We will work with the Forest Service to do projects. Our volunteering will include litter cleanups, trail maintenance, and other stewardship activities.

Group volunteering provides the public with opportunities to take care of the forest, which commits each of us as individuals to a collective interest in the forest. This helps connect people to the forest, giving us a sense of ownership through our work and recreation. This is a public asset, and it makes sense for locals to be involved with managing it.

Our very first litter clean up with be Sunday, April 6th at 2pm.

2. Expand recreation opportunities

There are several forest service logging roads that are public access and could be promoted for hiking and gravel biking. There is one area especially close to Oxford at the headwaters of Yellow Leaf Creek. This area has several logging roads that lead to a stream and beaver ponds. It has the potential to be a cool multi-use trail area.

Here are the proposed trails — Yellow Leaf Trails:

1. Yellow Leaf Trails trailhead + loop
2. Unnamed loop
3. and more to come!

We will hike on one of these trails on Satuday, April 5th at 1pm.

There is an old growth stand along one of those trails, and there is another old growth stand not far from the North Cypress trail near Puskus. All sorts of spots like this exist throughout the forest. Some are probably used informally by locals, and some are probably identified by the Forest Service as a good spot but just needs a bit of work. We're here to do that work, whether it's through organizing, getting community support, coordinating with the Forest Service, or getting out there with a mattock.

This desire to build new trails might create a tension between two stakeholders: hikers and hunters. Hikers don't want to hike around guns, and hunters don't want people anywhere near their secret spots. By identifying this sort of conflict at the very beginning of the organization's conception, we hope to bring diverse stakeholders together to navigate potential conflicts.

3. Public access preservation

The threat of public land becoming privatized always lurks, and it ebbs and flows depending on what's happening with the national political landscape. No matter your political opinion, the future of public land will affect you. It's looking more likely that the US government will sell some National Forests land in the future.

This is unfortunate, but we are realistic. In this case, Friends of Puskus believes the land should end up in the hands of the local communities so they can manage the forest. We are trying to position ourselves to be one of the community-controlled organizations that could do this. If the forest isn't sold, then we won't lose anything, because we will have created a forest stewardship group that can continue caring for the Holly Springs National Forest, as well as help protect other vulnerable lands in the southeast (where the Sipsey fans at???).

Native soil

I'm starting small by organizing litter cleanups and group hikes with my friends. I'm also sharing this website to see if there is any interest in an organization like this. I currently live in Vermont, but I grew up in Tupelo and lived in Oxford for a long time. I'm deeply connected to the community and still have many friends there. I own a small plot of land surrounded by the National Forest in Lafayette County, and it's where I have hopes of one day settling back in the these hills, my little postage stamp of native soil. And if it's not clear yet, I'm a lover of the National Forest system. It's one of my favorite things about America, alongside the literature and music and food.

Email me at sam@friendsofpuskus.net if you want to help me with this! I need help! Especially because I'm not local anymore. This is only successful with the leadership of local people.