American chestnut to heal scars

A few days ago I wrote a post showing the effects of strip mining on some of our most beautiful mountain tops. Since then I learned how some of those scars are merely covered up and how planting American chestnut trees could actually help those scars heal.

The use of the American chestnut is important to note here because a fungus blight that destroyed nearly 3.5 billion of the trees in the early 1900’s decimated the species nearly leaving it extinct. A few surviving trees, recently discovered in Warm Springs Georgia near Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Little White House, grow at the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains in an area known as Pine Mountain.

The federal government has been, for the last 30 years, requiring mining companies to smooth over all scars and seed the area with grass yet nearly 2.7 million open-sore acres still remain. Mining companies have been working to abide by the regulations but recently, federal regulators have begun promoting the planting of chestnuts and other hardwoods to improve drainage, reduce erosion and return the landscape to a more natural state.

In early March, 60 volunteers in a public-private partnership clambered over a coalfield on Zeb Mountain, 50 miles north of Knoxville, Tennessee and planted more than 200 germinated chestnut seeds over a two-acre plot of rocks, boulders and sandstone. The same thing will be done in the coming weeks in Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland and Virginia.

Mining companies should not be expected to be environmentalist or have forestry service talents, so working with individuals and organizations that do provide the know how is the best of all possible worlds. The project got its start in 2004, when regulators and university researchers in Appalachia and the mid-Atlantic states formed a network to push for the planting of chestnuts. It joined forces with the American Chestnut Foundation, and the idea soon gained backing from the U.S. Office of Surface Mining and the U.S. Forest Service. Only 300,000 acres are suitable for growing the chestnut so other trees and shrubs are planned.

The blight still lingers, along with the scars, but scientists are hopeful they can develop a blight-resistant hybrid and environmentalists are seeing a more sustainable answer than just planting grass. It is good to see that a collaboration between mining operators and environmentalist and scientist can lead to something meaningful.

300,000 acres down and 2.4 million acres to go.