Great Smoky Mountains National Park played a significant role in the development of a global program on biosphere reserves, and its future may be in doubt with the Trump Administration plans to withdraw from UNESCO in December.
The views of Vernon C. “Tom” Gilbert, a South Knoxvillian considered a force behind what’s known as the Man and the Biosphere Programme, will be discussed Oct. 20 at a meeting of the George Wright Society at the University of Tennessee Conference Center. The 98-year-old retiree had a long career with the National Park Service and U.S. State Department throughout the world before returning to his native Knoxville.
Gilbert’s talk, on how the the national park served as an example in the creation of the World Network of Biosphere
Reserves, will be presented by Susan Schexnayder, although he plans to attend the 2:10 p.m. session for elaboration or a Q&A session, he said. Schexnayer is a senior research associate in the School of Natural Resources at the UT Institute of Agriculture. Gilbert provided a copy of his scheduled remarks to this columnist.
The George Wright Society has sessions scheduled Oct. 19-22 on the topic, “It’s Time To Meet The Moment.” The George Wright Society, of which Gilbert is a founding director and first president, is a nonprofit association of researchers, managers, administrators, educators and other professionals in the private and public sectors who work on behalf of scientific and heritage values of protected areas.
A biosphere reserve plays a role in conserving biodiversity and sustaining ecosystem services. The park is the most biodiverse in the system with over 19,000 species of animals, plants, fungi and other organisms having been documented. A plaque describing its designation in 1976 is at Newfound Gap.
Gilbert has long been associated with the Smokies, having worked there as a naturalist after studying botany and ecology at UT. He also worked in Everglades National Park, Cape Hatteras and Cape Code national seashores, taught at the College of African Wildlife Management in Tanzania and headed the National Park Service’s environmental education program.
President Richard Nixon and Soviet Union Communist Party general secretary Leonid Brezhnev came up with an agreement in 1972 that contributed to the biosphere reserve program being conducted through the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO. Gilbert was selected to a position to assist UNESCO in developing the project and moved to Paris where he learned UNESCO had inadequate funding for the program, he says.
In 1974, Gilbert found an opportunity to work with Christian Herter Jr., assistant secretary for the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs of the Department of State, to get the biosphere reserve project in a summit conference scheduled to take place in Moscow in 1974. That became productive for the program, Gilbert said.
President Donald Trump withdrew support for UNESCO during his first administration and announced in 2025 at the beginning of his second administration that the U.S. would withdraw on Dec. 31, 2026. A press release by the State Department said, “Continued involvement in UNESCO is not in the national interest of the United States,” with a suggestion it has an anti-Israeli bias.
Gilbert says the worldwide biosphere reserves program probably would not have existed without the support of the U.S. in its early years. Since the program plays a significant role in conserving biodiversity and sustaining ecosystem services, Gilbert will ask the George Wright Society to “oppose the U.S. government plan to withdrawal from UNESCO this December.”
Gilbert said other options are to continue working with the United Nations Association of United States of America and the United Nations Foundation and Better World Campaign. The website for the United Nations Association of United States of America says it is a movement of more than 20,000 Americans and U.S. residents who believe in the United Nation’s principles and values and supports a world “that is just, peaceful, and prosperous on a healthy planet.”
Gilbert said a UT ambassadors program includes a biosphere reserve component where students have traveled to Japan to the Kobushi Biosphere in Yamansahi and Manami-Alps Biosphere west of Tokyo.
As of July, there are 795 biosphere reserves in 144 countries, Gilbert says.
“I couldn’t have done it without Patsy,” he told this columnist. His wife, Helen Strong “Patsy” Gilbert, was a distinguished artist who traveled with her husband for decades. She died in 2021.
ASHE GOES PUBLIC FOR DEMOCRAT: The public support by former Knoxville Mayor and U.S. Ambassador to Poland Victor Ashe, a Republican, for Democratic nominee Bryan Goldberg for the 18th House District seat against incumbent Republican Elaine Davis, is unusual.
While Ashe writes a column that often reflects his opinion for the Shopper News, he does not join his wife Joan in seeking money and support for candidates. In a fundraising letter sent out by the Goldberg campaign, the Ashes say they have gotten to know Goldberg and his wife, Adrienne, over the past four years.
“What began as a friendship has grown into a genuine admiration for the kind of people they are, the values they live by, and their commitment to making Knoxville an even better place to call home,” the letter says.
The letter says Goldberg has committed to addressing issues by working across party lines with Republican state Sen. Becky Massey on the increasingly frustrating traffic congestion on I-40. “That’s the kind of practical, bipartisan approach we need more of in Nashville,” the Ashes say.
Ashe said Oct. 16 he frequently supports candidates, though not always publicly and, of course, by the way he votes. He did not publicly support Goldberg in his unsuccessful campaign against Davis two years ago, he said.
“He does have a lot of Republican support,” Ashe said.
Joan Ashe has frequently been a financial contributor to campaigns since the couple returned from Poland in 2009, and the two do not always agree on candidates. “I have a very independent-minded wife,” Ashe said.
Davis could not be reached for comment.
Georgiana Vines is retired News Sentinel associate editor. She may be reached at gvpolitics@hotmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Knoxville man is a force behind UNESCO biosphere program | Georgiana Vines
