BLM Using Cattle To Reclaim
Abandoned Gold Mine Location

BAKER CITY, Ore. — It may cause anti-grazing activists to gnash their teeth and pound the floor, but the federal Bureau of Land Management plans to use cattle to restore native range plants at an abandoned open-pit mine site.

In a pioneering experiment, BLM has contracted with ranchers to use a herd of 200 cows to reclaim the land around the Minexco gold mine, which went bankrupt in 1986.

Previous restoration efforts had failed, and it was time to try something different, said Kata Bulinski, BLM lands specialist.

The project will use temporary electric fencing to concentrate the animals, a water system, about 130 tons of hay, more than 40 tons of straw, and seeding with native grasses and shrubs.

Most of the reclamation bond was spent on cyanide removal and there was not enough money to put the topsoil back, Bulinski said.

The BLM seeded the site in 1987, but because there is less than 10 inches of moisture a year, and winds and temperatures are extreme, the bare, sterile subsoil did not sustain much plant life, she said.

The idea for the current project came from Allen Throop of the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries, or DOGAMI. He had visited copper mines in Arizona where intensive cattle feeding had achieved good results in restoring tailings piles.

Baker cattlemen Meb and Shando Dailey, in partnership with Curt Jacobs, are providing the 200 cows at the 12-acre site, where the cattle are fed weed-free grass hay twice daily in one-acre pens, for four days.

The BLM also spreads seeds for native plants, and the cattle spend another day trampling it into the ground before moving to the next pen.

Hoof action has smoothed the contours in cuts and gullies, created depressions that catch water, and tilled the straw and hay into the soil, Bulinski said.

Manure and urine allow microbial action to begin where it was previously nonexistent.

The project has also involved other groups.

Inmates from the Powder River Correctional Institute helped spread straw and put up a perimeter fence. Boy Scout Troop 444 from Baker City gathered seeds of native plants for the reseeding. Eastern Oregon Miners and Prospectors have helped, and students from Baker Middle School, Baker High School and the Baker Alternative School are helping to reseed the site.

"The project itself is a great deal," Jacobs said. "There's something we can all learn out of it."