The Alabama River Diversity Network is dedicated to reconnecting communities to their home landscape, rebuilding connections between the region’s rich natural resources, human history and cultural diversity. The region Spans 7 million acres of globally significant forest and aquatic diversity, covering 23 counties in southwest and east central Alabama. This ecosystem supports the greatest diversity of turtles in the western hemisphere, more fish species than any similarly sized national river, and likely the greatest diversity of mussels, aquatic snails, and crawfish globally. This biodiversity is matched by the region’s human legacy as the homeland of numerous Indigenous tribes, and as a hub of the African diaspora and the cradle of the Civil Rights movement—a complex past that informs what ARDN sees as a hopeful future, reimagining and creating synergistic relationships that unify Alabama’s diverse human populations and the Alabama River region’s biodiverse landscape.
Since 2009, ARDN has been an advocate for the 23 counties that encompass the Alabama River, focusing on the 19 counties that make up the Alabama Black Belt Heritage Area.The organization’s two paid staff and three regular volunteers coordinate between community members, executive leadership and partner organizations to achieve a maximum impact. ARDN’s main priority areas are: conservation planning; cultural heritage, tourism and preservation; community engagement; and authentic human history and culture. With more than 20 partner organizations, many of them having worked with ARDN for almost a decade, they have been able to facilitate multiple cross-network collaborations. Chief among their efforts has been securing the inclusion of 19 Alabama counties – a region the size of New Jersey – as Heritage Areas, which is a National Park Service Designation. This gives NPS a chance to help ARDN and its partners develop plans to conserve and preserve sites throughout the region.
Remnants of a historical site. Photo Courtesy of Alabama River Diversity Network