To: Susan Neugent, CEO Fernbank Inc.
Open Fernbank Forest
Fernbank forest was open to the public for decades, but now since Fernbank Inc. ( Fernbank Museum of Natural History) took over management of the forest nearly two years ago, the community has been kept out.
Fernbank Inc. should make the forest accessible to everyone.
Why is this important?
Fernbank Forest helped:
-educate people about nature
-develop environmental responsibility in people
-foster fellowship in people as they took their nature walks
-peak curiousity and instill lifelong learning
Ms. Emily Stewart Harrison's family owned most of the land where the forest sits.
Ms. Harrison campaigned to preserve the forest in order for it to serve as an environmental teaching tool for people, especially children.
It pleased her to see several children enter the forest and enjoy its many wonders just as she had throughout her lifetime (1).
Fernbank Inc.'s shutting the community out of the forest goes against the board's inherent duty to use the forest as a teaching tool for as many people as possible.
"These heartstrings of ours have a curious way of getting tangled up in things: particular trees and rocks and hill slopes ... but gradually I had come to feel that Fernbank was too big and too beautiful for (one) family('s) consumption ... The best thing to do with it would be to put it into the lives of children . . ."- Emily Harrison
http://www.openfernbankforest.com/
(1) http://files.usgwarchives.net/ga/dekalb/bios/harrison994gbs.txt