And so the Mountain Forum was born. The Mountain Institute agreed to host the Forum's e-mail discussion lists and server, with Swiss support. The Forum has helped people realize that mountain communities share other features besides the obvious topographic ones. Thai hill tribes and Ecuadorian highlanders, among others, face the same prejudice. Infrastructural improvements like roads, not to mention communications, lag in mountain areas, and so do investments in education and jobs.
Mountains also have half the world's hotspots of biodiversity.
These are all issues that have been talked about on the Forum's discussion lists. It was a lucky stroke that the Internet boom came right when the Forum started. At the Mountain Institute's West Virginia base, Byers has co-managed the Forum's discussion lists and programs from the start. Internet access to hill communities is growing. The Forum's worldwide network server has moved out of West Virginia, but it's still in the Appalachians, in Harrisonburg, Virginia.