The Excerpt podcast: Can abandoned coal mines bring back biodiversity to an area?

On a special episode of The Excerpt podcast: There are thousands of abandoned coal mines all over the United States, many of which continue to be sources of toxic waste that threaten local communities and aggravate climate change. But can there be a positive second act for these relics of the industrial age? Wally Smith, a biologist at the University of Virginia, joins The Excerpt to discuss how former coal mines have become havens for resurgent wildlife.

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below.This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Dana Taylor:

Hello, and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, January 10th, 2024, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt.

There are thousands of abandoned coal mines all over the United States, many of which continue to be sources of toxic waste that threaten local communities and aggravate climate change. But can there be a positive second act for these relics of the industrial age? For decades, scientists have been studying how some abandoned coal mines have actually become a haven for biodiversity for both plants and wildlife. Can nature help us in revitalizing our damaged environment? We're talking to Wally Smith, a biologist at the University of Virginia, about how alive these areas are becoming and what we can do to support them. Thanks for being here, Wally.

Wally Smith:

Thanks so much for having me.

Dana Taylor:

So how many abandoned mines are there in the region that you study, and how many are there across the country?

Wally Smith:

Yeah, it's actually very difficult to get an exact figure of how many former surface mines are there, simply because mining has happened over such a long time period, and there's been so many different types of mines that have happened historically. But some of the best testaments that are out there in Appalachia at least, which is where I work in the Eastern US, is an area that's nearly the size of Delaware, has been surface mined at least one point in time historically. Close to where I work, I'm in the Virginia coal fields, in the southwestern corner of Virginia. We have an estimated 100,000 acres here that have been formally surface mined. And to put that in perspective, that comes out to an area that's around half the size of Shenandoah National Park. So a very sizable area has been mined, and there's even further areas across the rest of the country that have been mined in different ways as well. But in many ways, Appalachia, where I work, is ground zero for the impacts of surface mining historically.

Dana Taylor:

And you've been studying them for some time. First, where are the abandoned minds that you've been studying, and what signs of recovery did you first find there?

Wally Smith:

We actually have a forward surface mine, about 100 yards behind my office, where we've done a lot of work, and then also, through some community partnerships with local landowners, we've been able to go out and do some of that work on their properties as well. And those properties kind of run the gamut of the different types of surface mining that have occurred. Some are properties that are 50 years old or more, that's see how long ago the mining occurred there. Others are much more recent. And so something that we've been very interested in with our work is trying to figure out how does that legacy of mining and the age of mining, the approaches that were used or were not used during mining and reclamation, how does that actually impact what is happening on those mines for wildlife and for the environment.

Dana Taylor:

And were these old mines also supporting wildlife initially or is it too soon to tell?

Wally Smith:

Yeah, so that's what has really surprised us. There's this perception I think that we have in society, and I certainly had this perception when we started the work that when an area has been surface mined, it's kind of this degraded and destroyed landscape, kind of this blank slate where nothing is existing there. And some of that, I think, is deserved because there are a host of negative impacts that occur from mining. You take away native hardwood forests, you can damage the streams that occurred there. Historically, wildlife species in many cases can exist due to the disturbance from mining. So initially, those properties are very disturbed. But what has really surprised us is, when we actually go out on these properties and do surveys and try to figure out what wildlife species are living there, there's a lot more than we expected. And we think that some of those species have maybe held on following mining, so they maybe were there when mining occurred, and somehow they survived that and come back.

And then, in other cases, we're pretty certain that other species are actually coming back and reclaiming the sites themselves, which is really interesting. And that opens up a lot of questions about how are those species finding those properties or those sites, what habitats are they honing in on? What attributes of the mines are important to them? There's so much that we still don't know in addition to some of the good things that we have found.

Dana Taylor:

Well, I have to ask, what kinds of life have found their way back to these places?

Wally Smith:

So a shocking amount of wildlife exists on the mines in our area, and I really have to credit the work that we've done to one of our students several years ago who was an avid duck hunter. And he kind of touched off a lot of this work that we're doing. He was very big into conservation because of the hunting world that he lived in. And one of the things that he had noticed when he was going out on some of these properties that he had permission to go onto for hunting was that he was seeing some things that were not supposed to be there. When we think about our common perception of a surface mine, he was specifically seeing some duck species that are not supposed to be in this corner of Appalachia, and even then, they're especially not supposed to be on the top of a mountain, which is where the surface mines tend to occur.

And that touched off a host of other projects where we started looking into stuff at the same sites for different species. We found that amphibians are incredibly diverse in some of these properties. We only found one species called the green salamander, which is a gorgeous animal, about four to five inches in length, brilliantly green-colored. Typically, you find it in an intact hardwood forest somewhere in a isolated cliff or bluff. They live back in the cracks and crevices of these rock-out crops. And that's a species that's currently under review for a possible endangered species Act listing. And we ended up finding it holding on in little, isolated pockets of unmined habitat in some of these former surface mines. And then finally, we found a huge amount of mammal diversity in some of these properties.

Dana Taylor:

Okay. So, Wally, why do you think these abandoned coal mines are so good at supporting biodiversity? Is it something in the soil, or were the restored flora and fauna playing a role in that?

Wally Smith:

Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. It's something that I think we don't really understand completely at the moment, just because it's something where we're still just scratching the surface. There've been a lot of researchers beyond us here in North America over the last several decades with this question, but it really probably comes down to the habitat attributes that are there for those species. Even though these sites have been disturbed, many of our older mines have had what we call volunteered forest establish themselves. So hardwood forests have started to come back on their own on these properties, and those hardwood forests, even though they're not the same forest that was there historically before, mining tend to, in some cases, provide ample habitat for these species. So it's likely an area that at least is being undisturbed or unimpacted by recent human impacts for development, that type of thing in an older mine, and then also those wetlands where we found a lot of the mammal diversity and the duck diversity.

Those are incredibly important because, here in Appalachia, wetlands tend to be relatively rare compared to coastal parts of North America. Just because our terrain is so steep, it's difficult to get many wetlands to form.

Dana Taylor:

Well, then I have to ask, were the mines that you've studied any of them part of an intensive cleanup effort before you took a closer look? I mean, I'm sure you're aware that many of these old mines weren't actually restored to their original conditions as required by federal law by the companies who extracted the resources from them.

Wally Smith:

So that's one of the caveats with any former mind, really, the age of that mine dictates in a lot of cases what its condition is going to be. The federal law that we have currently that dictates how mines should be restored was put into place in 1977. So mines that were abandoned and not reclaimed before the passage of that law. We actually labeled those as abandoned mine lands. And then there are other mines that were mined and then reclaimed after 1977, the more recent properties they had been reclaimed under some federal guidelines, but even then, many of those properties aren't necessarily matching exactly what was there before binding. There was an era, for example, where we tended to plant non-native vegetation on many of our mines as opposed to allowing that hardwood forest to come back that was there before. And that has interrupted, but we call succession just the natural change in the environment falling disturbance of so many of those properties.

But on the bright side, we do have many properties, especially in Appalachia. There's some really great organizations spearheading this work to come in and actually replant those native hardwood forests even after reclamation has stopped. But it really comes down to the regulations that were in place when the mining happened, and then also some of the conservation efforts that have occurred since.

Dana Taylor:

Well, there are currently many, many proposals by environmental groups, state federal agencies to pump more money into cleaning up these mines. Beyond what companies have done themselves, is nature able to help us bridge that gap?

Wally Smith:

Yes, absolutely. So there's a huge amount of money right now to clean up many former mines. There's also several hundred million dollars. They have recently been greenlit by the Biden administration and Congress to redevelop some of these former properties as well. And so I think we kind of have to strike a balance between working with nature to help wildlife continue to recover at some of these sites or to allow, again, our native forest to come back. And then also making sure that if we do redevelop some of these properties as opposed to fully restoring them to make sure we're not doing that in a way to where we make things worse.

Dana Taylor:

Was an historic precedent for rewilding, the area around the Chernobyl nuclear plant, the site of one of the worst disasters involving nuclear power, has now, according to the UN, become an iconic experiment in rewilding. Are you at all surprised by this, and do you think all or even most abandoned toxic industrial sites have the potential to make this kind of recovery?

Wally Smith:

Yeah, I mean, again, may be a mixed bag. I think it is surprising just because we have assumptions about many areas that've been disturbed about how they're going to work in the future and what their health is going to be long-term. But I think it's really a testament to if we do the right kind of work and we can do research where we can and gain more scientific knowledge where we can, those can become the tools that we can use to either assist in what nature is already doing on some of these sites to recover on its own or to possibly help the really intentional land management trying to bring back those sites as close as we can to the historic trajectory they were on. I don't think it's possible, maybe for every single property that's been disturbed or has some type of toxic legacy, to bring it back exactly to how it was before.

We see some of that even here with acid mine drainage, which is a very pernicious type of water pollution that comes off of any former surface mines, and it's a very difficult thing to treat, and you may not be able to completely eliminate it, but there are ways to mitigate it to where it at least doesn't cause impacts off of that site. So I think again, it's kind of about striking imbalance and trying to figure out ways where we can evaluate a site, recognize maybe that every site is a little bit different. There's not a one-size-fits all approach to restoring some of these sites. And then using the knowledge that we get and trying to develop new tools to help them as much as we can to at least give them back to that historic trajectory where they should be. Before that disturbance occurred.

Dana Taylor:

Your team has created guidelines for local officials and land developers for these abandoned minds. I know you touched on this a bit, but can you summarize some of your specific recommendations?

Wally Smith:

I think the single biggest thing that any developer or a landowner, or local official could do is to simply cast a broad net when you're looking at developing a property and find local citizens, local subject matter experts, the people who know that property and know the region the best, and really be intentional about listening to different stakeholders and sharing data, making sure there's an inclusive conversation about what the sustainable reuse of that site looks like. So I think beyond just the wildlife, including those people in these discussions about what does a sustainable and equitable use of a surface might look like, that's really important that they can go a long way to making sure that even though these properties are all separate and they all have their own challenges and their own benefits, we can make sure that we can leverage the knowledge and the tools that we have the most effectively to get a positive future for those sites, for both wildlife and then also for people.

Dana Taylor:

There's been a big push here and in Europe to encourage the rewilding of lands beyond just abandoned industrial sites. Can you explain what this is and how it works?

Wally Smith:

Yes. So the concept of rewilding is very fascinating, and it goes back to the idea that we may not be able to completely undo the damage that's been done historically to an area, but there's ways to possibly help through human assistance to bring that area back, at least partially to where it was before. We actually have some great examples of that here in southwest Virginia, where I work historically. We wiped out the eastern elk, which was our native elk subspecies that was here historically, through overhunting and habitat loss. It's gone down, unfortunately, that particular elk species is extinct. But there's been a really interesting rewilding effort here over the last couple of decades to bring back the Elk to Virginia, and it's not the eastern elk that we used to have, but the Rocky Mountain elk, which is the famous North American ELT that people see when they go out west to places like Colorado. And that effort has been very successful, partially because people have looked at these former circus mines and acknowledged that they're not just these ecological blank slates.

They're a place where we can help through restoration and planning different food sources for those elk, and developing water sources for them. We can actually recreate habitat and use those properties which have this very dark and negative legacy to bring them back and make something positive out of them to help the elk recover.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks for being on The Excerpt, Wally.

Wally Smith:

Thank you so much.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks to our senior producer, Shannon Rae Green, for production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to [email protected]. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.