REDSTONE — Help is being harnessed from an unlikely source to repair a damaged and desolate landscape in the White River National Forest in the mountains west of Redstone.
Cows were enlisted to help break up the thin layer of soil covering waste-coal piles in Coal Basin, roughly six miles from Redstone. The ground on a 1-acre test plot on the massive pile has been covered with straw mixed with grass and hay seed. The cows’ split hooves till the hard ground and work in the seeds, while their waste provides the fertilizer.
The hope is that the grass germinates, takes hold and allows the slopes to hold water better, said Ben Carlson, a range technician with the Aspen-Sopris Ranger District of the Forest Service. That way rainfall won’t immediately run off the hardened soil and carry sediment into Coal Creek and ultimately to the Crystal River.
Cows will be kept off the test plot next summer to help the grass establish itself. Grass on the test plot will be compared to an adjacent “control plot” that was fenced off and won’t be seeded or have cows on it.
The revegetation experiment is relatively inexpensive at $10,300, in large part because the cows were enlisted to help speed the nutrient cycle and get the grass growing, Carlson said. The project expenses include fencing, hay and grass seed, straw and some weed spraying.
Coal Basin is an area that was mined for decades, most recently from the 1950s until 1990.
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