"If we had 200 Clinch Coalitions all over the country we couldn't be stopped," Andrew George, campaign coordinator and co-founder of the alliance, told the group.

The alliance is comprised of 130 local groups including the coalition whose interests are protecting national forests in their local areas.

"We felt the Clinch Coalition deserved special attention and recognition for their hard work to protect High Knob in the face of difficult odds," George said.

The coalition has been a vocal opponent to plans by the forest service to log several sections of High Knob. Tracts to be logged as a part of the Bark Camp sale have been offered for bids twice and no bids were received either time.

The coalition sued in federal court to stop the logging plans, but that suit was dismissed in favor of the forest service last spring.

During the course of the litigation, the forest service revised its plans for logging Bark Camp, reducing the acreage by about half to some 700 acres to be cut over a five-year period.

Prior to both sales, the coalition and the radical environmental group Earth First! sent letters and postcards to potential bidders urging them not to bid on the sales. Although there has been speculation in the community whether these efforts affected the bidding process, one coalition member downplayed its effect Saturday.

"It doesn't have anything to do with the environmentalists and their letters and postcards," John King said. "We don't have many companies with the capability to do those cable logging on high slopes kind of cuts."

Del. Clarence E. "Bud" Phillips, D-Sandy Ridge, the celebration's keynote speaker, told the group not to apologize for their activity. He said that citizens' groups are often mislabeled as radicals when they are exercising their rights to say how they want their forests used.

"Never apologize for loving the land," Phillips said. "Never apologize for standing up and saying what you believe in."

Although the forest service is looking at the sale and plans to re-offer the tracts for a third time in the coming months, there was a feeling of at least partial victory at the anniversary celebration.

"We're always making progress," said Karen Moore, a coalition board member. "Our board is growing, we've made new relationships and we've talked with the new district ranger - things are coming along. I think that it is positive that the ranger is willing to talk."

In addition to the National Forest Protection Alliance, the coalition has also had a controversial relationship with Earth First!, co-hosting a logging protest workshop "action camp" with the East Tennessee faction of that organization in the spring.

Earth First! has been showing up in Southwest Virginia throughout the year, most recently at a protest march to Inman where a 3-year old child was killed when a boulder rolled off a surface mine above his home.

Following that march, the group took responsibility for vandalism at A&G Mining Corp. office in Wise, the company mining the site.

On Saturday, however, an Earth First! presence was not obvious.

"There were a couple there," said Steve Brooks, coalition co-founder, "but we are trying to keep them at arm's length."

While the coalition has stated it is against any kind of logging on High Knob, individual members may be tempering their stand.

"We're not opposed to uneven aged management," said Brooks. "You can still make money in timber that way without destroying wildlife habitat. That's something a lot of us could live with."

King said, "They ought to work with horse loggers if they want to cut Bark Camp. I think everybody here would be in agreement with that."

But, Brooks said, the "shelterwood cuts" proposed by the forest service "are nothing but clear cuts that leave a dozen trees standing per acre and damage to half of them."

Saturday's agenda included remarks by Matt Crum, Clinch Valley director of The Nature Conservancy, a group that supports "best management practice logging" and believes that forests have to be cut to maintain their diversity.

Crum said the High Knob area is unique and his group is "looking very carefully at this area. We are very interested in the ecological value of High Knob being protected."

The coalition was founded seven years ago by Brooks and Otis Ward who Brooks said he met on the mountain looking for the Bark Camp area. Brooks asked Ward to sign a petition against logging drawn up by the Coalition for Jobs and Environment, and the Devil's Fork Trail Club.

"He gave me directions and I asked him to the sign the petition," Brooks said. "I just wanted him to sign it, but he asked me to give him petitions to get signed - it just went on from there."

The anniversary celebration culminated with a benefit concert by the bluegrass band Blue Highway in Appalachia Sunday night. Turnout was sparse, according to Brooks, who estimated the crowd to be about 200.

"Sunday was the only date the band had," Brooks said. "The next time we'll do it on Saturday."

He said the concert broke even, but didn't raise any money for the coalition.

The nationally known band played its song "Clear Cut," which band members say was written in response logging on High Knob in the 1990s.