If you drive long enough in West Virginia during the bare, gray winter months — when there is no foliage to obscure the view of mangled mountaintops and bare hillsides — you can’t help but notice humans and nature have taken their toll on huge swaths of land.

Just a few days ago I was driving up I-77 and kept noticing what looked like a combination of a timbering operation and a mudslide had wrecked more than one slope. We’ve all seen the results of the state’s extraction economy. I can’t help but wonder whether, as we lure tourists to our “underrated” destinations, they’ll notice the landscape along the way and get the wrong impression.

But there are ideas for reversing some of the damage, and a new one caught my eye this week.

According to Living Carbon, which “transforms marginal land into high-value environmental assets by combining advanced tree biotechnology with innovative reforestation,” it has inked a long-term agreement with the Symbiosis Coalition for 131,240 tonnes (metric tons) of carbon removal over ten years in “the Appalachia Region of the United States.”

Symbiosis members include Google, McKinsey and Meta.

Large-scale reforestation on abandoned mine and agricultural lands across the region is meant to rehabilitate the land AND help clean up the rest of the environment. One report suggested this reforestation could take place in West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky, but I was not able to confirm exact locations.

I’m also not QUITE clear on how Living Carbon’s model is sustainable — it calls itself a “public benefit company,” but it says “The project also provides new economic development opportunities for local communities. Landowners who partner with Living Carbon receive lease payments for otherwise unproductive and highly degraded lands. Living Carbon also works with local communities on land restoration, providing jobs and repurposing tools and machinery that had previously been used for mining for ecological recovery.”

Here’s hoping investors such as the Symbiosis Coalition, Temasek, Toyota Ventures, Felicis and Lowercarbon Capital continue to line up with their money. Living Carbon says it is working on reforestation and agroforestry projects that could remove as much as 500,000 tonnes of carbon in the next decade, and it would be wonderful to see the kind of ecological revitalization the group says it envisions.

Living Carbon says there are 1.6 million acres of abandoned mine lands in the U.S.; and 30 million acres of abandoned agricultural land. That is a lot to restore. It is good to see the company realizes that central Appalachia is among the hardest hit regions of the country — at least when it comes to the damage done by coal mining.

“This is why Living Carbon exists: We’re intentionally working to turn post-mining and degraded lands in the U.S. from environmental liabilities into productive carbon sinks that not only remove emissions but deliver significant and measurable environmental and social co-benefits as well,” said Maddie Hall, CEO and founder of Living Carbon.

Similarly idealistic projects have come and gone, though I don’t know that any had the backing of investors quite like the ones Living Carbon boasts. Let’s hope this one can put down roots.

Christina Myer is executive editor of The Parkersburg News and Sentinel. She can be reached via e-mail at cmyer@newsandsentinel.com