I’ve got a newfangled, “official” website now that I’ll be doing press for my upcoming book. You’ll find a one-stop shop at the link for my nonfiction texts & nearly 20 yrs (😬👴) of creative work that’s free online. This will also be home to info on my poetry collection, so stay tuned for details.

Wally Smith

Wally Smith is a conservation biologist and poet at The University of Virginia's College at Wise

wally-smith.com

Honored to be among this year’s selections! Higher and Better Uses is a journey through Appalachia’s extractive landscapes, from the coalfields to the Piedmont suburbs, examining how those places shape & are shaped by their natural & human residents. Stay tuned for info on how you can pick up a copy

Split Rock Review@splitrockreview.bsky.social · 3d ago

The results are in! Congratulations to Cassia Hameline and Wally Smith on the selection of their poetry chapbooks! www.splitrockreview.org/news/split-rock-press-chapbook-selections #chapbook #poetry #reading #writingcommunity

#DYK? 🤔 When rivers are allowed to overflow into their natural floodplains, they absorb and slow floodwaters, reducing destruction downstream. 🌾 Learn more: https://www.americanrivers.org/threats-solutions/restoring-damaged-rivers/naturalfloodplains/

Our county here in SW Virginia announced yesterday plans to build a gas-fired power plant to serve data centers. It will be built feet from a primary school’s playground & less than 1mi from a nursing home, four-year college, & high-density neighborhoods. County officials are heralding it as a win.

Grist@grist.org · 5mo ago

To power Utah’s data center boom, companies are turning to fossil fuels

Excited to have our hellbender restoration white paper out w/ the USDA! Our multiyear work to restore ecological & hydrologic function to a degraded reach of the Holston River provides a roadmap for building climate/flood resilience into habitat projects www.landscapepartnership.org/networks/wor...

working at a university

Several local communities and their (now terminated) projects in #SWVA are featured in this piece.

Nina Lakhani@ninalakhani.bsky.social · 8mo ago

By me: ‘Deeply demoralizing’: how Trump derailed coal country’s clean-energy revival www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Former UVA president Jim Ryan, who resigned over the summer due to pressure from the Trump Administration, just shared this 12-page letter with the Faculty Senate, detailing his experience with the Board of Visitors and DOJ. It's a surreal--and troubling--read. drive.google.com/file/d/1Is6x...

Lab member Hunter Hill and I are on Virginia NPR stations this morning to break up the depressing news cycle with some wholesome Spotted Salamander content. Big thanks to Roxy Todd for the coverage of our latest research study. www.wvtf.org/news/2025-11...

Spotted salamanders are finding their way onto former strip mines in Southwest Virginia

A former strip mine may not seem to be the most likely place to find wildlife. But a new study from biologists at UVA Wise finds salamanders are breeding on some mine sites.

wvtf.org

Beautiful fall day on the mountain above campus for some geoecology work as part of our USFWS-funded project on Plethodon pauleyi. Easy to forget how spoiled we are having field sites like this just a 15 min drive from the classroom door. One of many reasons why I love working in “far” SWVA.

The official USFS website right now is...something. Can't recall ever seeing the use of official govt resources for openly partisan objectives like I'm seeing today.

We've also translated our work into BMPs for mineland mgmt & reuse projects. These are critical as everyone - from conservative politicians to green groups - (inaccurately) sells old mines in #Appalachia as zero-cost sites for solar, data centers, nuke plants, & more. See: bit/ly/GrowingSm...

Wally Smith@wsmith1.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Our lab's latest paper reports some good news from the Virginia coalfields: Spotted #Salamanders love colonizing incidental wetlands formed on old coal mines, & now we know a little more about how & why (& which wetlands matter most). Full-text available here: digitalcommons.odu.edu/vjs/vol76/is...

Our lab's latest paper reports some good news from the Virginia coalfields: Spotted #Salamanders love colonizing incidental wetlands formed on old coal mines, & now we know a little more about how & why (& which wetlands matter most). Full-text available here: digitalcommons.odu.edu/vjs/vol76/is...

The @aaup.org just shared guidance for academic workers on how to protect themselves online www.aaup.org/news/advisor...

Advisory to Academic Workers

In a moment when it is becoming increasingly difficult to predict the consequences of our online speech and choices, the AAUP and Faculty First Responders are issuing guidance to AAUP members and othe...

aaup.org

📣We're hiring for our radio station WMMT! 📣 We're searching for a General Manager who will help carry forward WMMT's mission and keep the station thriving as a voice and resource for mountain people. Details and how to apply: appalshop.org/wmmtgm

“But now we’re very worried, because the Forest Service is actively pursuing aggressive timber targets that are unprecedented in scale and will directly harm hellbenders,” said Will Harlan, the Center's Southeast director. ⬇️

Planned environmental rule changes threaten beloved Eastern hellbender’s possible protection as endangered species • Asheville Watchdog

The ideal habitat of the Eastern hellbender that Tracy Davids described was pretty much what she saw on Tuesday morning as she stood ankle-deep in the Davidson River. “Relatively shallow, fast-moving,...

avlwatchdog.org

Our lab appears in this piece on coalfield solar farms. In brief: VA stripped regs requiring enviro assessments for mineland solar ➡️TNC announced, w/o such assessments, plans to build solar on mines home to at-risk wildlife ➡️we've been trying to undo the damage since. www.whro.org/virginia-cen...

In Virginia’s Coalfields, Renewable Projects Hit A New Roadblock – Trump

Renewable energy developers planned dozens of projects on property owned by The Nature Conservancy. Then President Donald Trump signed H.R. 1, upending an unprecedented effort to revitalize Appalachia...

whro.org

AMS released a statement on climate change today that points out five foundational flaws with the Department of Energy's 2025 climate report: www.ametsoc.org/ams/about-am...

The Practice and Assessment of Science: Five Foundational Flaws in the Department of Energy's 2025 Climate Report

Adopted by the Executive Committee of the AMS Council on 27 August 2025

ametsoc.org

Found this momma ’mander & baby ’manders on land wrecked by past surface mining & logging above Dante, VA today. A reminder that the phrase ”Who cares? It’s just an old surface mine” minimizes natural treasures like these that deserve our respect (& more thoughtful planning for post-mining land use)

Really enjoyed this excellent feature from back in April on our lab’s hellbender habitat restoration work…& what we learned when Helene dropped a generational flood on top of it. Check it out at the link, and look for a white paper on the project later this year.

Mother Jones@motherjones.com · last yr.

How climate disasters, human sprawl—and now Trump—are coming for the Eastern hellbender, America’s largest salamander

Depressing but informative piece on the “we need to clean out the streams” craze gripping #Appalachia in the wake of recent floods. Similar story to what we’ve seen with state-run ATV trail development digging out streams here in VA: regulatory agencies will turn tail & run when politics are at play

Vox@vox.com · last yr.

Debris removal after Hurricane Helene did more damage to the environment than the storm itself in some parts of the state, scientists claim. www.vox.com/down-to-eart...

Seeing this w/ a (highly-politicized) push to develop nuclear facilities in rural coalfield towns here in #Appalachia. Feasibility studies so far have omitted any analysis or consideration of waste storage/risks, & officials punt to “don’t worry; they’ll just recycle it” when Qs come up from locals.

Kevin J. Kircher@kevinjkircher.com · last yr.

One weird thing about nuclear power is that it's easy to model narrowly its economic and emission impacts, but very hard to model low-odds, high-impact risks associated with waste, spent fuel, weapons proliferation, military strikes on plants, etc. As most objective analyses omit huge factors, ..

1977: why would the bartender in star wars even care if some robots with artificial intelligence came into his bar 2025: ohhh ok

"This would nuke this creek," a Yale biologist said of a proposed data center in Alabama. The data center is projected to use more water than every home in the state and 90x the electricity of homes in Bessemer, where it's to be located. Full story: insideclimatenews.org/news/1606202...

Because you probably need a timeline cleanse right now, here’s some good news: we surpassed 5 new Virginia populations of Plethodon pauleyi this week for our lab’s new USFWS-funded project. It’s beginning to look like this ESA-petitioned species is (thankfully) much more common than we’d assumed.

I’ve heard the same argument - that dredging is a quick fix to stop flooding in #Appalachia - from local govt officials in recent meetings here in SW Virginia, just across the border from eastern KY. In reality, stream dredging makes flooding worse (see: www.kymitigation.org/wp-content/u...).

Nina Lakhani@ninalakhani.bsky.social · last yr.

ICYMI. By me: ‘Flooding could end southern Appalachia’: the earth scientists on an urgent mission to save lives by creating warning systems for floods and landslides in Kentucky as Trump’s assault on science and federal agencies likely to hit his base www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Setting aside the obvious ethical & 1st Amendment issues with this, one of the ongoing federally-funded research projects in my lab has now spanned 3 different presidential administrations. Our work, which is apolitical, happens on vastly different timescales from partisan politics.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · last yr.

Linda McMahon: "Universities should continue to be able to do research as long as they're abiding by the laws and in sync, I think, with the administration and what the administration is trying to accomplish."

Is it a perfect system without flaws or controversy? Hardly. But to claim that no one knows how policy decisions are made at higher ed institutions is inaccurate to the point of being bizarre.

Here comes Brood XIV of Periodical Cicadas, which are emerging from the soil in huge numbers here at the house this evening after 17 yrs belowground. Ready for the squealin’ to commence.

Gorgeous spring hike in the Jefferson NF here in Wise County today. Visible in the background (L side of image) is Brumley Mtn, with Holston Mtn and the Iron Mtns near Damascus, VA & the NC line visible on the far horizon.