![]() ![]() We learned that in 2021, Teck grossed over $3.6 billion before depreciation and amortization from just these four mines – and we learned who was shouldering the cost. After work, during the truck ride home or while waiting our turn to shower, we began to read and research. Everything that had been there was completely blown apart.Īs we began planting, we sought to learn more about the context of the reclamation efforts. No such life greeted us in the mines the lifeless, black blast rocks of the mine indicated death. Forestry cutblocks are scars on the landscape, to be sure, but scars indicate potential healing. On hot days, shade from the residual trees and clear flowing streams (or even stagnant, algae-filled mudholes) offer relief. We’ve waded through greenery up to our armpits, ducked and woven through alders, been stung by wasps and reduced to sneezing balls of allergies from the pollen and fireweed. They were forced to pay a one-time fine of 60 million dollars to the Canadian federal government – equivalent to just 1.5 per cent of their gross profits for that same year.Īnd yet, in the clear-cuts there is life: fawns and baby rabbits and birds’ nests toads and turtles. In March 2021, Teck was found guilty of knowingly polluting waterways under the Fisheries Act. The trees we plant are destined for harvest future two-by-fours. We are boots on the ground, barely different from the loggers, making a buck off of what was once a complex forest landscape. Tree planting, at least in B.C., is not saving the world. Teck promises its own reclamation efforts will not only create jobs, but will have a “Net Positive Impact,” meaning “ecosystems and biodiversity are better off at the end of mining than when we found them.” We soon learned from our project managers that Teck had significantly ramped up its planting program, from around 500,000 to 3.5 million seedlings each spring and that they hired some 80 additional planters and staff, including us, to fulfill this promise.Īs tree planters, we’ve resigned ourselves to the fact that our work enables industrial forestry to continue. If we can replace jobs mining coal with jobs cleaning up coal mines, the theory goes, workers can continue to feed their families while the world economy greens. Mine reclamation is intensive in terms of time, money, and labour, but it has been hailed by organizations like Nonprofit Quarterly, the World Bank, and the World Resources Institute as an integral part of a just transition. In the spring of 2022, the planting company for which Caleb and I have worked for several seasons was contracted by Teck Coal Ltd., a subsidiary of Teck Resources Ltd., to implement their newly expanded reclamation project. Candid photos would be damning, but a picture could hardly capture the extent of what was going on here. Snowy peaks, meadows, and subalpine forests – once habitat for grizzlies, bighorn sheep, and elk – were now a wasteland of blast rock, tailings ponds, and smokestacks. The level of disturbance was far beyond any forestry cutblock we’d ever seen. We were in a 203 square-kilometre open-pit coal mine, just one of the four that Teck Coal operates here. Looking around the site, at the southern edge of the Rocky Mountains in the Elk River valley on Ktunaxa territory, we understood why. The first thing we were told when we started working as tree planters for Teck Coal’s reclamation project was that we were forbidden from taking pictures in the mine. ![]() By Jennie Long and Caleb Cohen 14 min read Share
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