Replacing coal with cattle
Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - 02:07
in Earth & Climate
As Larry Clay tends cattle at D&D Ranch, massive dump trucks growl nearby, hauling off rock stripped away to uncover coal. The Perry County ranch site was a hillside covered in trees before Pine Branch Coal Sales mined it, leaving behind flatter areas reclaimed as pasture land. These days, the ranch has 800 to 1,000 acres of pasture where cattle graze as mining continues on other areas of the sprawling property.