COALFIELD PROGESS -
TUESDAY, APRIL 17,
2007
Students plant 2,000
trees for Arbor Day
JODI DEAL /
But helping to plant about 2,000 trees on land that was once a nearly vertical
and barren abandoned mine land site isn’t something many students can say
they’ve done.
About 175 local students from all six Wise County high schools, the Wise County
Career-Technical Center and Clintwood High School spent Friday morning and
afternoon climbing around the soft contours of a reclaimed mine site, planting
trees by the dozens.
Groups of five or six students each, led by representatives from the Virginia
Department of Forestry, dug holes and stamped in sapling after sapling into the
soil of a site about a mile away from Powell River Project on
Brad Williams, of the Virginia Department of Forestry, told the crowd that he
has a “compulsive, obsessive need to plant trees.
“What you’re doing today is planting for the future,” Williams said, noting
that the seedlings students put in the ground will likely provide homes for
wildlife for 70 to 80 years.
Not just pines
Lawrence Tankersley of the Virginia Department of
Forestry was quick to point out that the students weren’t just planting pines.
The hardy white pine was once the tree of choice for reclamation projects,
leaving them covered with scrubby evergreens and grasses.
About 1,000 of the trees were white pines, Tankersley
noted. But the other 1,000 included black oak, yellow poplar, Washington
Hawthorne, crabapple and green ash and even blight-resistant American
Chestnuts.
That’s important, explained state Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy
ecologist Chris Stanley, because those are all trees that can be found in the
natural forests of
If a variety of trees, both hardwood and evergreen,
are planted from the outset, the forest gets back to a more natural state much
faster, he noted.
“Pines are good, but if you want it back the way it was before, you need to
plant a variety of trees, like oaks and maples,” Virginia Tech researcher Carl
Zipper told students, noting that trees of any kind help hold down soil and
protect watersheds.
Pines were once favored because they grew well in the heavily compacted soil
required by reclamation laws in an attempt to stem erosion. But research has
shown,
Looser soil and greater tree diversity — those two concepts are the foundation
of a group called the Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative, which
helped organize Friday’s event.
ARRI and the other sponsors of the event, including Powell River Project, the
Virginia Department of Forestry, DMME and the federal Office of Surface Mining,
made sure students came away from the event understanding why they spent their
morning the way they did.
Students spent about half of their time at the three-hour event planting, and
the other half learning more about forest ecology, from what trees are native
to the forests of Southwest Virginia to what trees aren’t there anymore — namely,
the American Chestnut, which was nearly wiped out in the early 20th century by
blight.
Big problem, low priority
Before the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, not much was
done to many surface mining sites after the mineral
was removed from the ground.
Vertical highwalls and barren, rocky expanses still
remain in many coal-producing states from the days before reclamation
requirements. And while funding is available from the federal Office of Surface
Mining to fix some of the problem, that money usually goes to
sites that present an immediate risk to public health and safety, DMME
spokesperson Mike Abbott explained Friday.
About eight years ago, the land on which students planted the trees Friday was
a 4,800-linear-foot highwall and about five acres of
barren, eroding land,
Red River Coal agreed to reclaim the land in a no-cost agreement with DMME to
use “spoil” or dirt and rock removed from a nearby mining site to restore the
original contour of the abandoned mine land. That’s mutually beneficial,
If