Hanging in midair, Zheng installs a rock-catching net. [Photo by Wu Jianxun/For China Daily]
The day starts early for Zheng Baogang and his tree-planting team. At about 5 am, they are on their way to the site of an abandoned mine in Huzhou, Zhejiang province.
Since June, they have been working to restore the land to its past natural glory.
It is the most difficult reforestation project related to the former coal mines and stone quarries in the area that Zheng has participated in.
The Huzhou mine was put into operation in the late 1980s and is about 200 meters deep. Today, the entire site for reclamation is more than 200,000 square meters.
Wearing ropes and straps like mountaineers, Zheng and his team negotiate steps down the cliff to loosen the compacted soil and plant trees or grass seeds every day. In summer, the ground temperature can reach over 40 C, while in winter, it is freezing cold.
Although the work is dangerous and laborious, Zheng says it is rewarding to see the brownfields turning green.
Estimated to be completed by the end of this month, the project will enter a two-year maintenance period to restore the area's greenery.
In the past decade, Zheng has helped with such reclamation work at over 60 former sites. Some sites are even reviving parklands.
Zheng and his colleagues use safety ropes to clean the area and loosen the soil in the mine pit. [Photo by Wu Jianxun/For China Daily]
According to the local natural resources and planning bureau, Huzhou is rich in construction-grade stones. Starting in the 1980s, the stone industry developed rapidly, turning grasslands and forests into barren quarries.
This led to the overexploitation of resources and threatened the local natural ecosystem.
Zhu Zhonghua, director of the ecosystem restoration unit of the Huzhou natural resources and planning bureau, says a dozen mine sites are expected to complete reclamation this year.
Since the early 2000s, more than 400 former mines have undergone some form of restoration, including about 2,100 hectares turned into farmlands and nearly 1,700 hectares seeded with trees and grass.
The Qishan Botanical Garden is one of the earliest reclamation projects in the city. Located in Huzhou's Changxing county, it was transformed from the former Xinmao stone quarry in 2004.
The old pit under reclamation in Huzhou, Zhejiang province, is the most difficult mine reforestation project that Zheng Baogang has participated in. [Photo by Wu Jianxun/For China Daily]
Deep in the ground in Changxing, is another stone quarry that has been turned into a theme park called Taihu Lake Longemont Paradise. After eight years of restoration, the site attracted the park project with an investment of 27.8 billion yuan ($3.89 billion), which is bringing economic benefits and job opportunities to locals.
With the restoration of old mine sites, Huzhou is among the first batch of cities to put forward the concept of "green mines" that wants productivity as well as environmental protection. As the country has been decommissioning defunct mines because of environmental concerns, land reclamation at such sites is being encouraged.
From Nov 1, the national technical standards for mine restoration, issued by the Ministry of Natural Resources, came into effect. This aims to help to regulate the industry.
According to China Energy News, China closed some 12,000 coal mines by 2020. The figure is expected to reach 15,000 by 2030.
The team members check the safety rope before descending into the pit. [Photo by Wu Jianxun/For China Daily]
To guarantee the area's biodiversity, the team sow 16 varieties of seed. [Photo by Wu Jianxun/For China Daily]
A spraying machine is used to plant seeds on the walls of the pit. [Photo by Wu Jianxun/For China Daily]
It takes more than two hours to descend to the ground level.[Photo by Wu Jianxun/For China Daily]
Zheng (left) chats with his family after work. [Photo by Wu Jianxun/For China Daily]
It takes the seedlings a week to start growing. [Photo by Wu Jianxun/For China Daily]
