Bill Finch is the founding director of the Paint Rock Forest Research Center in the Cumberland Plateau region of northeast Alabama. He has worked to conserve Southeastern biodiversity for more than 40 years, as an award-wining writer and editor, as conservation director of the Nature Conservancy in Alabama, and as director of Mobile Botanical Gardens. He continues to write a weekly column on gardens and natural history and has a weekly radio show. His book, Longleaf Far as the Eye Can See, was developed with his partner, Beth, and is now in its fourth printing.