By Karen Chavez for the Asheville Citizen-Times
SWANNANOA – Western North Carolina's forests are having a midlife crisis.
Emerging from a bad past, forests are caught in a middle age limbo, with very little early succession, or young forest — important habitat for deer, turkey, birds and other wildlife — and very little old growth forest, also needed for wildlife, as well as for clean water, healthy soils and carbon sequestration, important in mitigating climate change.