According to a study from the Appalachian Citizens Law Center, roughly 40% of the Commonwealth's active strip mines are effectively abandoned.

A federal program called the Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative works to give retired surface mines a new lease on life by restoring their native forests and wildlife habitats.

Kentucky Edition rolled out to one of those sites in Pulaski County to see how the work is done.

I'm the only forester with the Office of Surface Mining.

My job is to plant, root, restore, and plant trees for old surface coal mines.

Otherwise known as strip mines.

It's farming on steroids.

You're going to turn a moonscape back into a native forest wildlife habitat.

And to me, this is the best job in the world.

Because I am bringing back a native forest.

Me and my partners, of course.

And and there's a, you know, there's there's science behind it.

These trees that we're planting, a lot of them are white oaks, which is a very important tree in Kentucky, not only for wildlife habitat, wildlife, food, furniture, flooring, but also that's what they make bourbon barrels out of.

I'm planting the next generation of white oaks.

Now, we don't plant a whole forest white oak.

We do a natural mix.

What we do is we mimic what mom nature has growing around.

Typically in Appalachia, there, there, it's 80 to 85% hardwood and 15 to 20% pine.

So we we try to stick to those percentages.

So we kind of balance out what mom nature already has growing.

Mom nature uses her own calendar.

So we have to adapt.

Sometimes you have to plant early.

Sometimes you're given a few extra weeks.

And in late spring that is cold and wet.

When trees are still dormant and you're good, I'll be going all over east west Kentucky, southwest Virginia, East Tennessee, southeast Ohio, West Virginia, that panhandle of Maryland, Pennsylvania.

I've got a lot of ground to cover.

The mine sites are kind of sort of the same.

Each one, and it's going to be a little unique.

But the the challenge is helping these landowners who don't have a lot of money because this is an expensive process to restore back to native trees.

But it can be done.

And there are there are pot to money and avenues to follow to get grants and, and sponsorships and that type of thing.

So in Appalachia alone, the estimate is like 1.2 million acres of moonscape.

That's, that's that's been reclaimed or not.

If it's abandoned, that's another problem.

But the mine inspectors, both state and federal, they're they're addressing that when I ride by and I see a big moonscape or a mine site, or I see a hillside that I know was mined or or a mountaintop removal site.

Then, you know, there's a lot of times I pull over on the side of the road and I write down where I am so I can find that on a map and come back and start finding out who owns it and talk to them and tell them there's a better way than growing kudzu and briers on your property.

We can plant that back in native trees.

Not so much for you, but for your children and grandchildren.

And our thanks to Blake Vickers for that story.

The Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative hosts volunteer tree planting events throughout the region in celebration of Earth Day and Arbor Day.