By Elizabeth McGowan
Russell County, Va.—On a sunny Friday morning in late March, the scene atop a 21.5-acre dome of bare, grooved soil at remote Stonecoal Creek unfolded like an outdoor ballet.
A dozen or so agile men lined up across the slope of a shuttered coal mine, gliding synchronously to an inaudible beat that repetition had embedded in their muscle memories.
In unison, each man raises a hoe-dad in one arm, arcing it high enough for the pick-like tool to pierce the earth with just enough force. Seconds later, the other hand plucks a tiny tree seedling from a cloth bag draped from the opposite shoulder, placing it in the shallow opening. Then, one foot in a well-worn boot steps forward to gently tamp the loose soil around the tiny tree so its bare roots can tap into nutrients and seek stability in its new home.
The team of professional planters from Williams Forestry & Associates will repeat the metrical “dance” moves hundreds of times—putting 11,450 baby trees in the ground by 5 p.m. Among the 18 species planted, roughly half were different types of oaks.
It’s a small but significant piece of land restoration that The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is executing on its massive Cumberland Forest Project, 253,000 acres in Central Appalachia.
“This place wants to be a hardwood forest,” said Link Elmore, TNC’s restoration coordinator. “It will take decades, but it would take forever to get there without intervention.
“What happens at the top of the mountain affects what flows into the Clinch River.”
Last fall, in preparation, a different crew had cleared the 20-plus acres of autumn olive and other invasive vegetation planted years ago as part of a sanctioned reclamation effort after the mind was officially shut down. Workers pushed the cut brush to the dome’s perimeter as a buffer to prevent erosion by holding the soil in place. Workers then mechanically scored the severely compacted soil with slashes designed to capture rain and snow long enough to penetrate the soil so seedlings wouldn’t go thirsty.
The new trees are too teeny to retain much of the carbon dioxide causing the accelerated warming of the planet. But they’re just a stone’s throw away from a more mature forest that TNC is counting on to help reverse climate change.
When TNC purchased the project properties in Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee in 2019, the previous owners had enrolled roughly 200,000 acres in a California program designed to capture the heat-trapping gas in Appalachian forests, and beyond. About 123,848 of those acres are in Virginia.
So, the more carbon the Cumberland Forest sequesters, the more carbon credits TNC accrues for those offsets. Basically, one credit is earned for each ton sequestered. Early on, the nonprofit earned enough credits to pay part of the purchase price.
The California Air Resources Board developed a cap-and-trade emissions trading program as part of an overarching plan to incrementally transition the state’s whole economy away from fossil fuels. In a nutshell, California businesses that haven’t met designated clean energy goals can buy a certain amount of carbon credits to offset the carbon pollution they still emit.
Photo credit: Elizabeth McGowan
Greg Meade, director of TNC’s Cumberland Forest project, explained that while TNC earned credits from 2019 to 2022, the nonprofit has opted to defer some of its 2023 credits and all of its 2024 credits until its forest growth rate aligns more realistically with the model designed by the U.S. Forest Service.
“That model was not built for carbon sequestration, but instead to help foresters manage stands (of trees) for decades,” he explained. “But nobody knew that back in 2015 when this was universally applied in Appalachia.
“Now we have to calibrate the model for the growth rate we’re seeing on the ground.”
One of TNC’s objectives is to store 5.1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2029, when it plans to put the Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky properties on the market. That hard-to-fathom number equates to the emissions an average gasoline-powered car would spew if it traveled 13 billion miles, according to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency calculator.
Thus far, TNC has surpassed sequestration of four metric tons and Meade predicts “we’ll be within 10 percent barring something unforeseen.”
Meade knows that economists in academia have found shortcomings with California’s model. However, he said he feels secure sticking with it because it doesn’t tolerate shortcuts. Hiring forest auditors to authenticate compliance is expensive for TNC, he added, but their calculations offer peace of mind that the nonprofit is staying true to its mission.
It’s one sign of an altering economy that Meade is managing carbon projects on swaths of Wise County acreage where both of his coal-mining grandfathers earned their livings.
“Now, we’re letting trees grow and focusing on species diversification, wildlife corridors and edge habitats for birds and other animals,” he said. “I sleep well at night knowing that we have done better with conservation here than any other owner would have.”
A sliver of that undertaking involves planting trees. Over the last six years, TNC has reforested 368 acres in Tennessee and 330 acres in Kentucky.
The 21.5-acre Stonecoal Creek site is the first and only in Virginia thus far. The $54,000 prep and planting cost was covered by TNC’s Appalachians program and Plant a Billion Trees.
“We don’t have a set goal for reforestation,” Elmore said. “It’s somewhat opportunistic as we find potential sites and then look for funding.”
As a way to forge community spirit, TNC set aside 1.5 acres at Stonecoal Creek so Russell County ninth-graders could get dirty for a worthy cause in late April.
And they did. On Arbor Day, the students climbed up the mine site to hand-plant the remaining 750 seedlings the professional crew had set aside in March.
One tree at a time, a wee forest is shaped by human hands—with hopes that it eventually outgrow the 14-and 15-year-olds, becoming robust and lofty enough to provide welcome shade and respite for their children and grandchildren.
NOTE: Reporter Elizabeth McGowan wrote a series of articles for the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO about The Nature Conservancy’s plans for its Cumberland Forest Project in Central Appalachia.
READ the main article, the Community Fund piece about the revival of Saint Paul, Va., and two articles about how the Trump administration threw a monkey wrench into proposals for solar projects.
