Interest is sprouting

Practically anywhere you look and see a flat place in the Appalachians, there used to be a mountain there.
The old Blue Ridge used to be a lot taller than they are now — age has stooped the mountains over time, worn them down and washed them away.
Man has stepped in to speed up the process, sending up bulldozers to the top of the hills to send aggregate spilling down the slopes with each processed and scooped for coal or other minerals.
Southwestern Virginia has its share of the pushing-down-a-mountain-type mining. Most of the earth moving that's done around the Twin Counties is to get at the rock itself.
The severe appearance of the cut and bare face of such a mountain comes as quite a visual shock, especially as it usually remains surrounded by lush and verdant hills.
But there's an intriguing idea out there that's seemingly gaining acceptance by scientists and foresters and miners alike, to not only reclaim the mined-out land but to quickly restart whole forests of the East's blighted chestnut tree.
In July, Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne planted a blight-resistant American chestnut tree in the nation’s capital to celebrate 30 years of reclaiming mine lands since the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977.
"The industry has successfully reclaimed more than 2.2 million acres of mined lands,” the otherwise obscure and very low profile Kempthorne said in a news release. “At many mines, the reclamation work has far exceeded all state and federal regulations."
Efforts now include planting both pure and hybrid chestnut trees to reforest stripped areas, as this will provide a great opportunity to repopulate the species that the blight nearly wiped out.
“At breeding orchards in Virginia and at Penn State University, the American Chestnut Foundation’s scientists have taken Chinese chestnut trees, which are resistant to the blight, and bred them with their American cousins over several generations,” said Marshal T. Case, President and CEO of the foundation. “The most recent generations of hybrids have nearly 95 percent of the American chestnut’s genes, combined with the blight resistance of the Chinese chestnut. After 25 years of effort, we are producing seeds and seedlings to replant across the American landscape.”
The sturdy and straight growing chestnut would also supply ample benefits for these local economies, with community-boosting profits from future timbering and credits for carbon sequestration in the trees.
The blight killed 3.5 billion chestnut trees, which once accounted a quarter of all trees on the East Coast and in the Ohio Valley.
The American chestnut tree grew to heights of 100 feet with a five-foot diameter, the news release said. The chestnut also had the advantages of straight grain, light weight and natural resistance to decay and insects, once making it a favorite for construction and furniture making from America’s colonial days. 
“In planting this tree, we are planting the hope and making a commitment that this noble hardwood will be restored to the American landscape and its vital ecological role in our nation’s forests,” Kempthorne said. “With our partners from the American Chestnut Foundation and the mining industry, we are working to help return this natural icon to Appalachia by planting it on reclaimed surface mine lands.”
“The coal fields of Appalachia match up almost perfectly with what once was the natural range of the American chestnut,” Kempthorne explained. “And we have discovered that chestnuts grow twice as fast on the loosely packed soils commonly found on reclamation sites.” 
Because reclaimed mine sites in Appalachia are surrounded by forests, wildlife will spread the American chestnut seeds from reclaimed areas to neighboring forests, allowing nature to repopulate the mountains with the American chestnut, the news release said.

• Originally published September 2007