The construction of the new I-26 corridor connecting Asheville with Johnson City, Tennessee, involved lots of tricky environmental maneuvers, including the relocation of streams, old gravesites, and thousands of rare and endangered plants. For over a year, using survey flags as their guides, groups of volunteers trudged into the woods, dug up bloodroot, ginseng, goldenseal, jack-in-the-pulpit, and countless obscure ferns, and transplanted them to public gardens, nature preserves, land trusts, and sometimes their own backyards.

Working fast to stay ahead of the logging trucks and bulldozers, nearly every plant conservation group in the area participated in rescue expeditions. Volunteers from the Asheville Botanical Garden, the North Carolina Arboretum, and Warren Wilson College transplanted trilliums, bloodroot, and other rare plants to safe havens. So did garden clubbers, Sierra Club members, and individuals who found the time and energy to climb the steep hillsides armed with hand trowels and plastic bags. Volunteers say it was rewarding work.

“The best days I have enjoyed on this earth were after a plant rescue,” says Robert Eidus, steward of a certified Native Botanical Sanctuary in Marshall, NC. Eidus led nearly 40 expeditions, which were done in the mornings so that every plant dug could be replanted by the end of the day. Many of the plant rescues took place along the headwaters of Little Creek, only a few miles from the Appalachian Trail near Sam’s Gap. North Carolina law requires written permission to gather plants from land that one does not own, including public land. But landowners–including the state of North Carolina–often are so worried about liability problems that written permission cannot be obtained before the plants are destroyed. As I-26 construction began, there was no time to wait for official approval.

“Once the bulldozers move in, the rescue work is over,” Eidus says.

The new leg of I-26 includes scenic overlooks, a parking area for the Appalachian Trail, and animal crossings built beneath the road so that bear, deer and other wildlife can cross from one side to the other safely. It also includes the highest bridge in North Carolina. From the Laurel Creek Bridge, you’re looking down 220 feet.

Photographer and writer Rob Amberg has followed the project’s development with his camera for ten years. “It’s been a major change for the DOT (Department of Transportation) in terms of how they’ve dealt with water quality and wildlife habitat,” Amberg says. “They had to look at the environmental issues associated with development a lot more intently and carefully.”

The plant rescues that were done prior to the I-26 construction echo a growing movement to safeguard rare and endangered plants. Construction of EPA’s new buildings in Triangle Park, NC, were preceded by organized plant rescues. In the last twelve years, the Georgia Native Plant Society estimates that its volunteers have moved over 200,000 wildflowers, ferns, shrubs and trees to new homes.

As for the I-26 plant rescues, Amberg was struck by the care with which people moved precious parts of the landscape with their own hands. “Watching a woman dig a trillium is so different from what you see when bulldozers strip and sterilize the same place,” he notes. The environmental price tag for the I-26 project was high, but it was reduced in meaningful ways by the dedicated digging of plant rescuers.

–Barbara Pleasant