Mountain Madness

So species such as forest-interior birds, most of which depend on the insects that billow out of rich forest streams, lose their food at the same time their habitat is destroyed and fragmented. Warblers, for example, are being devastated by mountain-range removal. Among the many victims is the cerulean warbler, a blue jewel whose core breeding area overlaps the Appalachian coal fields and whose population is down an estimated 70 percent, having declined at a rate of about 4 percent a year since 1966. Audubon, the Southern Environmental Law Center, and 26 other environmental groups have petitioned for it to receive threatened status. "The cerulean is leading the decline of warblers that depend on old, extensive forests," comments Chris Canfield, director of Audubon's North Carolina office. "If we can protect its habitat, lots of species lower down on the watch list will also benefit."

Many birds, however, thrive in fragmented forests, as the coal industry's PR ministers tirelessly point out. While we're not running out of these species--wild turkeys, killdeer, cowbirds, etc.--the message is that mountain-range removal is a blessing, creating habitat for wildlife and people alike. Without "mountaintop mining," say the ministers, Appalachia would be too hilly for such social benefits as the prison scheduled to be built in Logan County. According to the president of Princess Beverly Coal, land is "200 percent better" after the company removes mountains. Appalachian schools welcome the PR ministers and the literature they tote, such as Coal Mining Counts, a coloring book in which a sentient rock truck named Smiley declares, "Let's slice the mountain and look inside. . . . After we mine the coal, we must put back the rocks, dirt, and plants. This is called reclamation."

The PR ministers at Arch Coal and A.T. Massey--the companies responsible for most of what I'd seen from the air--said they couldn't help me when I asked to be given a ground tour of their most beautiful reclamation. Instead, they referred me to one Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association. "Winter," averred Raney, "is the absolute worst time" to look at reclamations. "If you're interested in doing a balanced story, you need to come in May." When I informed him that this would not be possible, he offered to supply Audubon with photos made when the reclamations had been more presentable. Basically, the deal was that he'd show me a reclamation if I got Audubon's art department to let him illustrate my article. "Let me tell you," he exclaimed, "we have entertained and opened ourselves up to everybody in the last two years, and all we ever see from these publications is a picture of an active mining site. That's why I'm so insistent; as a matter of fact, I'm about three-quarters pissed about the whole thing."

"Have there been any balanced stories?" I inquired.

"They all promised to be balanced coming in, but they're not."

"You mean not even one publication has printed a balanced story on mountaintop removal--ever?" He paused, then allowed that maybe some local ones had, but he couldn't name one. "No," he said emphatically when I asked if he'd meant The Charleston Gazette, which had investigated 81 permits issued by the DEP and found that only 20 had been written legally.

Later in the day, and still seeking to be shown a good reclamation site, I called the West Virginia Mining and Reclamation Association. Bill Raney picked up the phone there, too. "We done some research on you," he intoned. He'd read a piece on mountain-range removal I'd written for a fishing magazine called Fly Rod & Reel. He said it wasn't balanced.

So I went to see Larry Gibson, who maintains the Stanley Heirs park and cemetery in Kayford--the only place in West Virginia where nonindustry people can legally inspect reclaimed and active mountain-range removal sites from the ground. Gibson's great-great-grandfather Crockett Stanley settled this hollow in 1820.

The only thing in heaven, hell, or this world that frightens Larry Gibson is a dragline. A year ago three men ran his truck into Cabin Creek, then stood on the bank, laughing at him. Maybe this and other such incidents have something to do with his "unbalanced" bumper stickers, all of which are still in place: "If nothing grows on it, it must have been mined"; "Almost level--West Virginia"; "Stop Mountaintop Removal"; "Tax coal"; "Real miners do it deep in the dark." People who imagine that Gibson has deprived them of job opportunities slash his tires fairly regularly, smash his windows, knock over the park's outhouses and signs, and shoot up the buildings. Two years ago he wore out four pairs of tennis shoes on a 540-mile "walk for the mountains" across West Virginia, this a week after undergoing angioplasty and the insertion of two stents.

As a child, Gibson lived on Kayford Mountain, planting corn, tending bees, milking cows, churning butter. If "mountaintop mining" has been "good for West Virginia," it hasn't been good for the town of Kayford. The farms are gone; the church is gone; the school is gone; the town--all 800 houses--is gone; and the mountains to the west and north are gone. Nine years ago Gibson talked his 538 relatives into not selling out to the coal industry and, instead, making their 50 acres a public park. "I told the guy from Massey he couldn't buy this land," says Gibson, "and he looks at me and says, 'We ain't seen nothing we can't buy.' Well, he has now."