Driving into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on Newfound Gap Road, it's easy to imagine the Southern Appalachians as they were centuries ago. Outside my window, brawny elk and wild turkeys browse meadows edged by dense woodlands, and blooming wildflowers add splashes of seasonal spring color. But, much of the flora and fauna has only returned relatively recently, since the landscape was protected as a national park in 1934. A century ago, most of the hardwood forest shrouding the slopes of the Great Smoky Mountains had been clear-cut. The elk were gone, too, extirpated by the mid 1800s, along with mountain lions, bison, and red wolves. Now, though, nearly 95 percent of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is forested, and species once driven to extinction have been restored,…