Peter Bates, associate professor of natural resource conservation and management at Western Carolina University, recently was recognized for his work done in conjunction with the permanent conservation of the town of Sylva’s 1,088-acre Fisher Creek watershed.

Bates and his students conducted timber inventories in the Fisher Creek watershed, in Bryson City’s Lands Creek watershed, which also is no longer used as a water source, and in Waynesville’s still-active Allen’s Creek watershed. The inventories were used to help officials determine if forest management activities within the watershed could be ecologically and economically viable.

Acquired by Sylva in the 1920s and no longer used as the town’s source of water, the Fisher Creek watershed — also known as Pinnacle Park — is being preserved through a conservation easement conveyed by the town to the state. In return, the town has received a $3.5 million grant from the Clean Water Management Trust Fund.

Bates told the officials at the Sylva ceremony that he and his students “are proud to have an opportunity to partner with the municipalities and others who have assumed the complex, but vitally important, task of protecting these properties in perpetuity.” Bates said his goal is “to provide them with sound and unbiased information to help in that process.”

Paul Carlson, executive director of the Land Trust for the Little Tennessee, said Bates also has been assisting local private landowners who haven’t known where to turn for environmentally sensitive forest management advice.

Carlson said Bates “represents the best of the university’s connection to local communities — helping the communities understand better their resources and the conservation of them.”