Debate underway on name change to Wayne National Forest

Some 40 Native American tribes have ancestral ties to Wayne National Forest, a quarter-million acres spread across portions of Appalachian southeastern Ohio. Their citizens have never stopped helping the U.S. Forest Service manage this expanse of forested hills, hollows, streams and lakes. Now, a vigorous debate is underway over a Forest Service proposal to replace the name of Gen. Anthony Wayne, a founding father who Americans of an earlier era celebrated as an “Indian fighter,” with something more neutral: Buckeye National Forest, after the state tree.