Spear points, hammer stones and picks lost to history under layers of leaves, roots and rocks - it was the evidence Scott Ashcraft was looking for.
The ancient tools were inadvertently unearthed in 2021 by a bulldozer fighting a wildfire along a steep slope in western North Carolina. Ashcraft, a career U.S. Forest Service archaeologist, knew these wooded mountainsides held more clues to early human history in the Appalachian Mountains than anyone had imagined.
He tried for years to raise the alarm to forest managers, saying outdated modeling that ignored the artifacts sometimes hidden on steep terrain - especially sites significant to Native American tribes - needed to be reconsidered when planning for prescribed fires, logging projects, new recreational trails and other work on national forest lands.
Instead, Ashcraft says managers retaliated against him and pushed ahead with their plans, often violating historic preservation and environmental protection laws by side stepping consultations with tribes, limiting input from state archaeologists and systematically suppressing scientific data.
In a letter shared with The Associated Press, Ashcraft sent his concerns Thursday to top officials in the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Interior Department, White House Council on Native American Affairs and National Congress of American Indians. He described an escalating pattern of illegal, unethical and irresponsible behavior by forest managers in North Carolina that stands in sharp contrast to the historic strides the Biden administration has made nationally to include Indigenous expertise when making decisions about public land management.
