There is an ongoing effort to restore native forests and wildlife habitats on old surface coal mines in Appalachia. The Appalachian Reforestation Initiative has been in the works since 2004.
Cliff Drouet is a forester in the Office of Surface Mining in Lexington. In an interview with WEKU’s Eastern Standard, he explained how they go about planting the new trees.
“Now we’re planting native species. We get in there first with ‘dozers with ripper shanks in the back and cross-rip it, it’s like farming on steroids. Bust up that hard pan, hand plant bare-root native seedlings, one-year-old, they’re probably 16 to 18 inches tall, no bigger than a pencil.”…