Trapper Mine Reclamation Attracts Wildlife, wins praise

October 3, 2002 - 9:42 AM

Nature's comeback

Trapper Mine reclamation attracts wildlife, wins praise
By Steve Raabe, Denver Post Business Writer
Tuesday, November 12, 2002

CRAIG - A threatened bird species has found a comfortable home at a northwest Colorado coal mine, leading to a prestigious reclamation award.

AFTER: The Trapper Mine project after grasses and shrubs were established.

The Trapper Mine near Craig recently was named the nation's third-best mine reclamation in the past 25 years by the Department of Interior.

Not only has the Columbian sharp-tailed grouse thrived on Trapper's reclaimed land, but large herds of elk, deer and antelope graze on grassy hillsides where coal once was strip mined.

Even environmentalists, often foes of the coal industry, have expressed admiration.

"We have been watching their operation and I must say we're impressed," said Steve Smith, a Colorado-based Sierra Club official. "They have been very creative and very responsive to the regulations in place."

The Trapper Mine employs a meticulous process of saving excavated rock and top soil, using it to refill valleys and pits left by coal mining, and then seeding the reclaimed swaths with a variety of plants and grasses.

Mining and reclamation operate on a continuous cycle, with reclamation specialists moving in after each section of coal is mined.

About 3,000 acres of the 10,000-

acre mine have been reclaimed. The mine has enough coal to operate at least until 2014.

Areas that were first mined when operations began in 1977 are now mature reclaimed landscapes that support elk, deer, antelope, birds and numerous other species.

The reclaimed sections are so rife with wildlife that Trapper's environmental manager, Forrest Luke, recently drove his pickup truck less than a half-mile from his office before encountering a herd of about 100 elk and a handful of pronghorn antelope.

"We're kind of proud of the fact that a lot of wildlife managers were concerned there would be no wildlife (after mining), and now we've proved pretty conclusively that didn't happen," Luke said.

A series of studies undertaken by the mine and the Colorado Division of Wildlife give credence to Luke's claim.

Winter surveys of elk population on 35,300 acres that include the mine and surrounding properties show more than a tenfold increase from the mid-1970s, before mining started, to a recent count completed last year.

Mule deer populations have remained steady before and during mining. No antelope were discovered in a pre-mining survey; the recent count showed 43 antelope.

Perhaps the mine's most notable wildlife recovery effort is the return of the sharp-tailed grouse.

Once one of the most abundant game birds in North America, the sharp-tailed grouse in recent decades has lost more than 80 percent of its Wester