Catch and Release: Extracting Value from Trout in Abandoned Mine Land Reclamation

Keywords: Mine reclamation, fish, law, ecological restoration
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 2

Abstract

In the United States, ecological restoration of abandoned or closing coal mines (mine reclamation) is regulated by a combination of federal laws (most famously SMCRA, the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act) and programs administered by individual states (LaHood 2019). Abandoned mine lands (AML) are characterized by manifold hazards to human and more-than-human beings. In 2019, five individuals testified before a congressional subcommittee to argue that despite the high cost of mine reclamation, mitigating mine-related hazards benefits mine-adjacent human and more-than-human communities.

To understand how the value of fish is represented I analyzed the transcripts of testimonies from individuals representing organizations advocating for the passage of the RECLAIM act and other acts aiming to amend SMCRA to add economic incentives to mine reclamation. I found that the value previously found in coal is now transposed onto beings such as fish to promote sustainable post-mining economic futures. Under this settler-colonial government, only certain forms of human-environment relationships are possible and fish are understood to have only economic value or the potential to produce it. The harm done to human and more-than-human beings is not rectified out of an ethical imperative to acknowledge and heal that harm, rather the harm done to these beings inhibits the working of the economy (Todd 2016). Analyzing these testimonies illuminates how ecological restoration in this context serves to perpetuate extractive capitalism by centering white settler human-fish relations (Todd 2016, Druschke et al. 2017).