Asking the pikas politely…
Focuses on revegetating disturbed lands around molybdenum mining operations in western Colorado, connecting industry-sponsored reclamation efforts with experimental test plots, native and introduced plant species trials, and regulatory permitting processes.
Mine site revegetation and plant community restoration address one of the most visible legacies of resource extraction in the Rocky Mountains: the disturbed soils, tailings piles, and overburden left behind by historic and active mining operations. In the Gunnison Basin and across western Colorado, molybdenum, gold, uranium, and coal mines have removed or buried native vegetation across high-elevation sites where short growing seasons, thin soils, intense ultraviolet radiation, and harsh winters make natural recovery extraordinarily slow. Restoring functional plant communities on these sites matters for water quality (vegetated soils trap sediment and metals), wildlife habitat, livestock forage, fugitive dust suppression, and the long-term stability of slopes that would otherwise erode into trout streams and irrigation systems.
Practitioners working in this neighborhood draw on a specific set of tools and metrics. Test plots are small experimental areas where seed mixes, soil amendments, and treatments are compared before being scaled up across a mine site. Transplanting moves established plants or plugs onto disturbed ground to jump-start cover where direct seeding fails. Production estimates quantify how much forage or biomass a revegetated site yields, allowing comparison with reference rangelands. Multispecies toxicity tests evaluate whether tailings, leachates, or amended soils can support a suite of organisms rather than a single indicator species. And measurements of chlorophylls and carotenoids in plant tissues provide a physiological readout of whether transplanted or seeded vegetation is actually thriving on amended substrates, or merely surviving.
The modern framework for high-altitude revegetation in western Colorado grew out of intensive work in the 1960s through 1980s tied to specific mining proposals. Correspondence and research agreements between Climax Molybdenum, Camp Dresser & McKee Inc., and Western State College documented early efforts on tailing revegetation, soil amendments, and dust control at Mount Emmons and the Climax site Company Sponsored Research. These efforts fed directly into the Mount Emmons Mining and Reclamation Permit Application, which laid out tailing revegetation and fugitive dust suppression strategies under emerging state oversight Mount Emmons Permit. Parallel work at the Homestake Mining Company Pitch Project produced an environmental statement that became a reference point for uranium-era reclamation planning in the region .
Technical report (1979-1980). Covers Gunnison, Colorado, Marshall Creek. Topics: revegetation, hydromulching, reclamation, overburden. Agencies: Homes...
Correspondence (1964-1980). Covers Gunnison, Mount Emmons, Wheat Ridge. Topics: mine tailing revegetation, high altitude revegetation, soil amendments...
Mining permit (1964-1980). Covers Mount Emmons, Wheat Ridge, Gunnison. Topics: tailing revegetation, high altitude revegetation, mining reclamation, f...
Western State College of Colorado. 1981.
Technical report (1954-1955). Covers Nutras Creek, West Chavez Creek, East Chavez Creek. Topics: annual forage production, beaver habitat abandonment,...
Eugene G. Siemer,?CSU Mountain Meadow Research Center, 1986
By: Eugene G. Simmer, Superintendent CSU Mountain Meadow Research Center.
Plant functional traits can vary widely as a result of phenotypic plasticity to abiotic conditions. Trait variation may also reflect responses to the ...
Trait-based ecology predicts that evolution in high-resource agricultural environments should select for suites of traits that enable fast resource ac...
These projects operated within the regulatory framework administered by the Colorado Mined Land Reclamation Board, whose oversight is visible in technical reporting from Marshall Creek and other Gunnison-area sites that documented hydromulching, overburden handling, and revegetation trials 1980 Technical Report. Earlier baseline work, such as forage production surveys on Nutras Creek and the Chavez Creek drainages, established what undisturbed western Colorado rangelands actually produced and provided benchmarks against which reclaimed sites could be judged Determination of Annual Forage Production.
A distinctive feature of revegetation policy in western Colorado is the partnership among industry, academia, and specialized nonprofits. Climax Molybdenum Company has historically funded and hosted long-running trials at Climax and Henderson mines, while the Upper Colorado Environmental Plant Center develops and supplies regionally adapted seed of species such as Pascopyrum smithii (western wheatgrass), Bromus species, and Astragalus legumes. The Committee for High-Altitude Revegetation, an NGO bridging researchers and practitioners, has helped standardize methods for sites above 9,000 feet. Western State College (now Western Colorado University) and the CSU Environmental Resource Center, along with the Forest and Range Experiment Station, have provided much of the applied science behind seed mix design and amendment protocols Company Sponsored Research.
Management approaches typically combine regrading and topsoil replacement, application of organic amendments, hydromulching, and seeding with mixes that include native grasses, introduced forage species like Phleum pratense (Timothy) and Poa pratensis (Kentucky bluegrass), and nitrogen-fixing legumes such as Trifolium repens and Medicago. Adjacent management of irrigated mountain meadows, documented by the CSU Mountain Meadow Research Center, has informed practices for re-establishing productive herbaceous cover on disturbed valley-bottom sites Improving Irrigated Mountain Meadows Improving Irrigated Mountain Meadows.
The most persistent challenge is the legacy of introduced species seeded for quick cover. Crested wheatgrass (Agropyron cristatum), planted across millions of acres of western rangeland between 1940 and 1980, can dominate sites for decades and resist conversion back to diverse native communities; mechanical removal trials in western Colorado have shown limited success and sometimes reduce native grasses further (Grant-Hoffman et al., 2012). Climate change compounds the problem by shifting precipitation timing, increasing drought stress on establishing seedlings, and altering the insect communities that interact with revegetated stands, including aphid species documented on Bromus marginatus and Elymus glaucus in the region (Hammon & Peairs, 1998). Pests on planted conifers such as Colorado blue spruce add another layer of complication for woody-plant restoration (Heller & Kellogg, 1989).
Future directions emphasize native seed sourcing, soil microbial inoculation, and adaptive management that accepts novel plant communities where full historical restoration is infeasible. The active reclamation requirements embedded in modern permits, descended from documents like the Mount Emmons application Mount Emmons Permit, increasingly require monitoring of plant diversity and ecosystem function rather than simply percent cover.
Revegetation policy connects directly to long-term ecological research in the Gunnison Basin. Studies of subalpine plant phenology, pollination, and community composition at RMBL provide reference data for what intact high-elevation plant communities look like and how they respond to climate variability, informing target conditions for reclamation. Soil ecology, sagebrush dynamics involving big sagebrush, and forage production studies tied to baseline reports Determination of Annual Forage Production link revegetation outcomes to broader questions about rangeland resilience, ungulate habitat, and watershed function across western Colorado.
1980 Technical Report on Marshall Creek revegetation. →
Company Sponsored Research - Camp Dresser and McKee Inc. →
Determination of Annual Forage Production. →
Grant-Hoffman et al., 2012. Crested wheatgrass seedings in Western Colorado. →
Hammon & Peairs, 1998. Natural History of Diuraphis Species in Western Colorado. →
Heller & Kellogg, 1989. Spring Control of Cooley Spruce Gall Adelgid. →
Homestake Mining Company Pitch Project Environmental Statement. →
Improving Irrigated Mountain Meadows (Siemer, 1986). →
Improving Irrigated Mountain Meadows (Simmer). →
Mount Emmons Mining and Reclamation Permit Application. →