Maria Gunnoe is an environmentalist who opposes mountaintop removal mining. She is featured in the 2008 documentary film Burning the Future: Coal in America

Burning the Future: Coal in America

Burning the Future: Coal in America is a 2008 documentary film produced and directed by David Novack. The film focuses on the impacts of mountaintop mining in the Appalachians, where mountain ridges are scraped away by heavy machinery to access coal seams below, a process that is cheaper and faster...

and the 2007 documentary film Mountain Top Removal. In 2006, Gunnoe received the Callaway Award for her organizing efforts in her southern West Virginia

West Virginia

West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...

 community.

In 2009 Gunnoe received the Goldman Environmental Prize

Goldman Environmental Prize

The Goldman Environmental Prize is a prize awarded annually to grassroots environmental activists, one from each of the world's six geographic regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, Islands and Island Nations, North America, and South and Central America. The prize includes a no-strings-attached award of...

, which is the second time an environmentalist has been awarded a Goldman Prize for fighting coal mining operations in West Virginia. In 2003, Julia Bonds

Julia Bonds

Julia "Judy" Bonds was an organizer and activist from the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, United States. Raised in a family of coalminers, she worked from an early age at minimum wage jobs. Bonds was the director of Coal River Mountain Watch...

won a Goldman for opposing the controversial practice of mountaintop removal in Appalachia.