https://archive.ph/Fy3rt
"WEST LAFAYETTE, Ohio — Michael French trudged through a thicket of prickly
bramble, unfazed by the branches he had to swat away on occasion in order to
arrive at a quiet spot of hilly land that was once mined for coal. Now,
however, it is patched with flowering goldenrods and long yellow-green grasses
and dotted with tree saplings.
The sight, he acknowledged, would seem unimpressive to most. Yet it might be
Mr. French’s most prized accomplishment. To him, the young trees symbolize what
could be a critical comeback for some of the country’s vanishing forests, and
for one tree in particular, the American chestnut.
“I don’t see it how most people see it,” he said. “I look at this and I see how
it’s going to be in 80 to 100 years.”
By then, Mr. French envisions that the chestnut, a beloved tree nearly wiped
out a century ago by a blight-causing fungus, will be among those that make up
an expansive forest of native trees and plants.
Billions of chestnuts once dominated Appalachia, with Americans over many
generations relying on their hardy trunks for log cabins, floor panels and
telephone poles. Families would store the trees’ small, brown nuts in attics to
eat during the holiday season.
Now, Mr. French and his colleagues at Green Forests Work, a nonprofit group,
hope to aid the decades-long effort to revive the American chestnut by bringing
the trees back onto Appalachia’s former coal mines. Decades of mining, which
have contributed to global warming, also left behind dry, acidic and hardened
earth that made it difficult to grow much beyond nonnative herbaceous plants
and grasses.
As coal continues to decline and many of the remaining mines shut down for
good, foresters say that restoring mining sites is an opportunity to prove that
something productive can be made of lands that have been degraded by decades of
extractive activity, particularly at a moment when trees are increasingly
valued for their climate benefits. Forests can capture planet-warming
emissions, create safe harbor for endangered wildlife species and make
ecosystems more resilient to extreme weather events like flooding."
Via
Future Crunch Oct 7, 2022:
<
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-us-crime-conservation-argentina-evs-china/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
