Friday, March 19, 2010
Flowers On Mountaintop Removal Mines?
KENTUCKY...
Gov. Steve Beshear has signed a bill intended to restore native flowering plants on mountaintops that have been defoliated by mining. The intent is to bring back pollen-producing vegetation that honeybees need to survive in the central Appalachians, where mining has obliterated entire ridgetops and the blooming trees and shrubs that once grew on them. The new law puts the spotlight on an issue that has received little attention in the debate over a controversial mining method known as mountaintop removal: how it affects Appalachia's insect population, particularly honeybees that need flowering plants to survive. In mountaintop removal mining, forests are cleared and rock is blasted apart to get to coal buried underneath.
Gov. Steve Beshear has signed a bill intended to restore native flowering plants on mountaintops that have been defoliated by mining. The intent is to bring back pollen-producing vegetation that honeybees need to survive in the central Appalachians, where mining has obliterated entire ridgetops and the blooming trees and shrubs that once grew on them. The new law puts the spotlight on an issue that has received little attention in the debate over a controversial mining method known as mountaintop removal: how it affects Appalachia's insect population, particularly honeybees that need flowering plants to survive. In mountaintop removal mining, forests are cleared and rock is blasted apart to get to coal buried underneath.
# posted by Homer Owens @ 8:41 AM 
