White Rocks Fundraising a Sucess!

Three Appalachian Trail maintaining clubs recently participated in a friendly competition to raise money for the South Mountain Partnership. This Partnership is a cooperative effort by several conservation organizations to preserve from development land along South Mountain in Southcentral Pennsylvania. Both the Appalachian Trail and the White Rocks Trail pass near the land that the parnership seeks to preserve. The money raised will be used for expenditures that need to occur before certain proposed government grants will become available. In addition, the fundraising effort showed governmental officials and political leaders how important this acquisition is to their constituents in the conservation community.

The competition was
(1) Most money raised per member, and
(2) Highest percentage of members who contributed. SATC sent letters to 360 of its members, MCM 446 and CVATC 149.

As stakes for the competition, it was agreed that the third place Club would have two of its members work on the winner’s section for a day, and the second place Club will have one of its members work on the winner’s section for a day.

Here are the final results.

CLUB PERCENTAGE OF MEMBERS CONTRIBUTING

MONEY PER MEMBER
CVATC 47/149 =.3154 $4,380/149 =$29.40
SATC 77/360 = .2139 $6,058/360 = $16.83
MCM 75/446 = .1682 $3,167/446 = $7.10

An additional 18 people made contributions totalling $2835 and did not designate one of the Clubs for credit. That makes a grand total of $16,440 raised as of late September, 2009. Of course, the real winners are the trail community and the South Mountain project. Thanks to each club member who contributed to this important project!!

Congress Approves $1.82 Million for White Rocks!! Still needs to be signed by the President.

Congress approves thousands of acres of added protection for the Appalachian Trail
Public agencies and private conservancies soon will be able to add thousands of acres of buffer lands around the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Tennessee, thanks to $9.8 million in appropriations approved by Congress late Thursday and sent to President Obama for signature before Sunday.

All of the projects funded as part of the fiscal 2010 appropriations bill for the Interior Department involve sensitive habitat for a variety of threatened plants and animals, key local watersheds and fisheries, and nonmotorized outdoor recreation benefitting local economies. The private Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC), which coordinates management of the trail, led testimony before appropriations subcommittees in support of all the projects and is working on most with wide-ranging coalitions of local, state, and other national nonprofit organizations, with bipartisan support in Congress.

The funded projects include $1.82 million for about half the cost of National Park Service purchase of five tracts totaling about 1,000 acres around White Rocks area in south-central Pennsylvania. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy, founded in 1925 by volunteers and federal officials who were working to build a continuous footpath on the Appalachian Mountains from Maine to Georgia, is focused solely on the protection, management, and promotion of the Appalachian Trail.