Plundering Appalachia The Tragedy of Mountaintop-Removal Coal Mining

Tom Butler is the editorial projects director for the Foundation for Deep Ecology, and a long-time conservation activist focused on wilderness and biodiversity. He is a founding board member and current vice president of the Northeast Wilderness Trust, the only land trust in the northeastern United States focused exclusively on protecting forever-wild landscapes. His book Wild Earth: Wild Ideas for a World Out of Balance collected essays from the conservation journal Butler edited from 1997–2005. In his last project Wildlands Philanthropy, Butler immersed himself in the creation stories of parks, refuges, and nature preserves established over the span of a century. With Plundering Appalachia Butler changes the tone of his work, calling attention to a shocking practice with profound environmental consequences.