The soil of former coal mines can be so highly compacted that trees can't thrive. By ripping deep furrows in the soil, conservationists give tree roots a place to grow.

Cerulean warbler populations have declined 70% in the past 40 years. The coal country of the Ohio Hills is at the heart of their breeding range.

Southeastern Ohio has produced millions of tons of coal in past decades.  It also produces a substantial portion of the world’s cerulean warblers.  These two Ohio products usually come from separate pieces of land.  The warblers prefer mature forests.  After mining, the land is often left so highly compacted that tree roots struggle to survive.  Non-native grass and shrubs dominate.  Left in that condition, the land may never again produce the kind of forest cerulean warblers use for nesting.  When you look at an air photo of southeastern Ohio, the former coal mines stand out as scattered grassy pockets in a mostly forested landscape.

The Ohio Partners for Fish and Wildlife have joined forces with the American Bird Conservancy and the Ohio Chapters of the National Wild Turkey Federation to start making one former coal mine hospitable to cerulean warblers and a host of other wildlife species.

Last fall, the Partners for Fish & Wildlife program hired a bulldozer equipped with two 3 foot ripping bars.  By dragging these bars through the highly compacted mine land, the bulldozer created seams of loose soil where tree roots can find the space they need.  This spring, the American Bird Conservancy and the Ohio Chapter of the National Wild Turkey Federation provided thousands of oak, hickory and tulip poplar seedlings.  The landowner, Kurt Neltner, contributed the labor of planting the seedlings.  Neltner says he’d prefer to have a forest instead of grass to help attract turkeys and deer.  “I like to hunt and fish”, he said.

Biologist Kristin Westad is looking for more landowners like Kurt Neltner -- people who own abandoned mine land adjacent to big forest blocks in the heart of the cerulean warbler’s breeding range; people who want to help the wildlife on their land.

It will take decades for the seedlings to produce nuts to feed turkeys or to reach the size cerulean warblers like for nests.  In the early years, the young forest will provide habitat for other vulnerable bird species such as woodcock and prairie warbler.  The young forest will also serve as a buffer for cerulean warbler habitat in the adjacent mature forest.  “Just taking it from grassland to a young scrubby forest will improve the productivity of cerulean warblers that live nearby,” says Brian Smith of the American Bird Conservancy.