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Nearly half a million trees to be planted. More than two tonnes of locally harvested seeds to be used. All this before the mine even closes.

An estimated 29 per cent of the De Beers Victor Mine site will be reclaimed this year while the mine carries out full production in its final year. Ontario’s first and only diamond mine is scheduled to move into closure and reclamation in early 2019 when mining operations end as scheduled.

The $7.4 million progressive reclamation program in 2018 will see the company plant 477, 110 trees, shrubs and other plants; reclaim 146 hectares of land, and sow 2,200 kilograms of native seeds. When the program is complete, 288 hectares of the 975 ha mine site will have undergone progressive reclamation since proactive environmental closure activities began in 2014.

This feat is a combined effort of an earthworks team reshaping the land to its natural contour and moving hundreds of tonnes of earth during the winter months and the revegetation team taking over in the spring, summer and fall.

The intensive program boasts astonishing numbers:

· 477, 110 trees, shrubs and other plants consisting of:

o 246,460 conifer tree seedlings (47,409 Tamarak, 103,204 Black Spruce and 95,847 Jack Pine)

o 100,000 alder seedling plugs, many grown from seeds collected by Attawapiskat youth over the past four years

o 64,500 willow and poplar live stakes

o 66, 150 native shrubs and plants

· 2,175 kilograms of native grass seeds

· 146 hectares reclaimed to bring the total area reclaimed over two years to 288 hectares

· 24 employees (8 De Beers reclamation team members, 8 contractor employees, 8 tree-planters)

The reclamation team has already started work sowing 100,000 alder seedling plugs in the on-site greenhouse. The seedling plugs will grow in the greenhouse for the next five to six months so they can ‘harden off’, or grow enough strength to be planted in low-lying areas of reclaimed mine rock piles.

“These seeds are coming from the seed collection program that were collected by youth from Attawapiskat First Nation near their community,” said Katherine Garrah, one of two De Beers Reclamation Supervisors at the site.

For the fifth year, a team of students from Attawapiskat will be hired to collect seeds from July to September. Collected seeds are sent to the mine where they are cleaned, dried, sorted and stored. Some of the seeds are sent off site to grow at nurseries in Timmins and Sudbury, and others are germinated in the mine site’s crop box – a modular vertical greenhouse facility inside a sea can – which was brought to site in 2016. For more information on the Victor Mine crop box, click here.

Starting in in late May the tree-planting team will put over 246, 460 seedlings and 66, 150 native plants and other shrubs in the ground in the span of a month.

Planting of live poplar and willow stakes will continue into October.

During 2017, 166,000 trees and willow stakes were planted on the mine site as part of a $4.2 million progressive reclamation program.