The Flight 93 National Memorial Reforestation Monitoring Project

Author: Brendan Muckian-Bates, ACLC Policy & Advocacy Associate

The benefits of the Forestry Reclamation Approach (FRA) are clearly exemplified at the Flight 93 National Memorial. Over a decade, 150,000 tree seedlings have been planted on an old surface mine at the site. The success of this recent reforestation effort has not only further solidified the impacts of the FRA on former mine lands, but also the ability of the Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative (ARRI) to engage across multiple agencies and private businesses towards a common goal.

In September 2002, President George W. Bush signed into law the Flight 93 National Memorial Act, commemorating the site where forty victims died. Since then, the Flight 93 site has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Three years later, the Flight 93 Advisory Commission sent recommendations to the Department of Interior outlining the planning designs for a permanent memorial, in partnership with the National Park Service, the National Park Foundation, and various local, state, and federal agencies. Through this public-private partnership, and with fourteen years of planning, the Flight 93 National Memorial opened on September 10, 2015.

The national monument is located in Somerset County, 78 miles southeast of Pittsburgh and just outside the city of Johnstown. The region itself has a long history of coal mining, dating back to the late-19th and early-20th century. Large-scale, often violent coal strikes occurred during this period, as production peaked in the 1920s and the population reached its zenith in 1940. The site itself is located on a surface mine that had active surface mining activity from the 1950s through the mid-1990s, though deep mining occurred until 2002.

Beginning in 2011, the Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE) and the National Park Service established a team to develop their decade-long program to reforest areas of the Memorial. Included in this partnership was Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Green Forests Work, the Pennsylvania DEP, the American Chestnut Foundation, the USDA, USFS, Allegheny National Forest, the National Park Foundation, ARRI, and the Friends of Flight 93. The project was established in order to “evaluate reforestation success and provide data to drive future management decisions.” Within the scope of reforestation, project partners also sought to evaluate the growth of plants, determine survival rates for native, woody species, and describe the level of other competing vegetation across the 10 phases of planting.

The following Spring, the Plant a Tree at Flight 93 began. Over the next decade, this partnership assisted in the reforestation of 150,000 native tree species with the support of over 4,200 volunteers.

The memorial site itself was chosen due to its proximity to the reclaimed surface mine on which it is located, while its visibility as a national memorial could provide visitors with insight into the benefits of reforestation techniques, such as the Forestry Reclamation Approach. One partner in this project has been nearby Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP). Dr. Michael Tyree, Associate Professor of Plant Ecology at IUP, noted that many undergraduate and graduate students have had the opportunity to get involved in inventory and research projects through this partnership. Dr. Tyree stated that, “The largest success has been the ability to get our students involved in the restoration of this National Memorial. It has allowed for valuable teaching and research opportunities and has provided our students with hands-on restoration experience.”

In their 2022 growing season report, IUP and OSMRE highlight the survival rates for woody species, evaluate health and growth of certain plants, and describe the extent of competing vegetation that could hinder restoration. The greatest survival stocking was “within our small-seeded deciduous trees and wildlife plants,” which was “due to extensive natural regeneration” of tree species, such as black cherry and black locust, hawthorn, and red maple, while conifer and hard mast-producing plants had a modest survival rate in comparison.

Donna Gibson, Executive Director of Friends of Flight 93, stated that the impact that reforestation had was monumental. “While volunteering,” Gibson relayed, “you point to the areas of reforestation, and you tell visitors the impact the project has had – how many volunteer hours, how many trees – they can visually see the impact the project has had on the site.” Gibson herself started her work at the memorial site initially as a volunteer tree planter. Like others in the area, the experience led her to getting involved in other areas of reforestation. Some became volunteer ambassadors with the National Park Service, others board members, yet through that experience of collective work, there was “fun and a feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day.”

The Plant a Tree at Flight 93 was, in the words of Fred Lukachinsky, president of the Friends of Flight 93, “a tremendous event and represents one of the most successful and popular volunteer activities at the Memorial.” More than 160 service organizations, businesses, and governmental organizations provided assistance to the conservation project, and while the official planting project itself has ended, Flight 93 National Memorial Superintendent Stephen Clark stated that the “partnership plans to continue the tradition of bringing volunteers together and working on various elements across the 2,200-acre memorial landscape.”

The successful reforestation of the Flight 93 National Memorial highlights the benefits of ARRI in its ability to work collaboratively across federal and state agencies, combine the knowledge and expertise of local institutions of higher education, draw in supportive business partners, and provide volunteers with experiences that will assist them in the future.