Nelson, 47, is a prominent plant res�cuer who dug � by himself-10,000 yellow ladyslipper plants from a road paving site in Minnesota a few years ago.� A former middle school science teacher, Nelson now makes a living through landscaping and rescued-plant sales.

He says he sells primarily to nature centers, university gardens and arboretums, but he sold about 100 of the rare yellow ladyslippers to each of two American nurseries.

Kentucky's Shooting Star Nursery in Frankfort was one.

Nelson said he picked the Kentucky nursery "because I like them.� I love the Southern accent," and he said he is in�terested in -establishing con�nections within Kentucky's na�tive-plant interest groups.

Connie May, manager of Shooting Star Nursery, said she was thrilled to get the or�chids (Cypripedium calceolus), which are native to Kentucky.

"There's something magical about ladyslippers," said May.� "But the special thing is that this is the first time I know of that we or anyone can have yellow ladyslippers that are ethically wild dug."

Shooting Star, a mail-order nursery, specializes in nursery-�propagated or wild-rescued wildflowers.� It does not sell wild-collected plants.

The yellow ladyslippers, priced at $16 a pot, are selling fast.� May said she will ra�tion them one plant to a customer, first-�come, first-served.� The nursery is open Fridays and Satur�days from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. this month.� The only other way to obtain this orchid ethically, May said, is through tissue cul�ture.� She said such plants are very tiny, cost around $25 and probably will take three more years to bloom.

Nelson and May are pio�neers in a growing group of American and European gar�deners concerned about the di�lemma of ever-more popular native-plant landscaping, which creates a demand for plants so hard to propagate they often are collected secret�ly in the wild.

"In some areas (yellow ladyslippers) are like dandelions.�� In some areas they are not," said Nelson.� "If people are picking them out of the woods where they are not, you�re decimating them�It�s a moral issue.�

This is why Nelson lobbied for Minnesota to sanction a permit for native-plant rescue and subsequent sale.� This, permit gives the buyer peace of mind, said May.

The other issue, even with wild-�rescued plants that would otherwise not have a chance, is whether they will grow well in a domestic setting.� May said she is not sure about the Northern yellow ladyslippers making a trip south to Kentucky gardens, but because they do grow naturally in Kentucky, "I tend to feet like it's probably not a problem.�

Nelson's Woods End Nursery in Northfield, Minn., came about as he swapped teaching for landscaping.� Working with native limestone to create rock gardens, he likes to plant with native plants.� Nelson said it's easy to find prairie native plants, "but in the woodland area, there was a void." And so he used to buv from wild collectors in Kentucky, Missouri, Wisconsin and New York.

"Then, I had a long, straight look at the market and at construction projects, such as a state highway expansion that took out 70,000 ferns in one swoop.� "I did the math on that," he said.

And he calculated that if a single plant is worth, say, $5, this would be a $350,000 loss.

"It has value.� To me it's insane to run through the hills of Tennessee collecting trillium grandiflorum and a few miles away they are plowing them under by the dozens,� said Nelson, who recently sold 4,000 trilliums to the University of Minnesota.

May said she hopes the presence of the yellow ladyslipper at the nursery and stories like this will encourage similar businesses in Kentucky.

"What's happening now," she said, "and it's very troubling in Tennessee and North Carolina, these businesses go out and dig bloodroot, for example, or ladyslipper and take them to their nursery�and heel them in-put them in holding beds - and say they are nursery-propagated and they are not."

Some wildflowers are easily propa�gated, like foam flowers and alum root,but the ladyslippers, both yel�low and pink, bloodroot, twinleaf, jack-in-the-pulpit, trillium, hepatica and dogtooth violet are not, and you need to ask questions if you buy them.

Among those questions: "Did you buy these plants you are selling me?" "Where do these plants come from.

Shooting Star Nursery, 444 Bates Road in Frankfort, is open Friday and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in May and again in September.� For a catalog or more information, call (502) 223-1679.

2nd pair of rare birds nest in state

By ANDREW MELNYKOVYCH, The Courier-Journal

One of the falcons took wing recently in search of prey. A change in their behavior April 7 suggested the female had eggs: The birds now stay on the nest in shifts. PHOTO BY: MICHAEL HAYMAN THE COURIER-JOURNAL

A pair of rare peregrine falcons have made their home 160 feet up a smokestack at a Louisville Gas & Electric Co. power plant on the Ohio River in Trimble County.

From that base they are hunting meadowlarks, starlings and other prey -- and apparently starting a family.

The presence of the birds -- only the second pair to nest in Kentucky in the last 50 years -- suggests that efforts to reintroduce peregrines to the state are succeeding. The birds were nearly wiped out by exposure to the pesticide DDT, which interferes with their nesting.

Biologists haven't yet been able to identify the peregrines by the the color-coded bands on their legs, but think they may have arrived from another Kentucky power plant.

"They are very likely birds we released from the Ghent plant, which is a stone's throw up the (Ohio) river," said Laura Burford, who coordinates the falcon-restoration program for the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. "If this pair turns out to be our birds, it makes you feel that the work we're doing is really beginning to pay off."

Louisville peregrine pair are parents again

By ANDREW MELNYKOVYCH The Courier-Journal Two young falcons were spotted at the nest site three weeks ago, said Gary Michael, curator of birds at the Louisville Zoo. They appeared to be about a week old, he said. This is the third year of confirmed nesting by the pair. They had two young in 1997, although one was later found with a broken wing and couldn't be returned to the wild. The pair raised a single chick last year. The falcons also may have nested in 1995 -- the first year they were seen mating. No nest site was identified, but a fledgling falcon was found on the Indiana shore near the Kennedy Bridge that July. The Louisville Zoo has been coordinating a falcon watch on the riverfront since 1995. Teams watch the birds beginning in March, when they breed, until the young are on their own in late summer. Once the young start testing their wings, the falcon watch will include keeping boats on standby, in case one of the young birds falls into the river and needs to be rescued. "This help has to be necessary and very important," Michael said. "We have rescued and released birds in the past." Michael said this year's falcon watch is being dedicated to the memory of Mary Grizzle, a longtime volunteer who died last winter. Volunteers with boats will be needed in a few weeks, when the young falcons begin testing their wings. To help, call Michael at 451-0440, Extension 346.

The Ghent plant is a stone's throw from the
Trimble plant only in peregrine terms. It's actually about 25 miles as the falcon flies -- at speeds of 100 mph or more.

Burford said 21 birds were released at the Ghent plant in 1997 and 1998. Another 31 birds were released in the mid-1990s at the E.W. Brown power plant near Shakertown.

All three plants are owned by LG&E Energy Corp.

Ron Bethany, a records coordinator at the Trimble plant, has been trying to attract peregrines to the plant for five years. Bethany, who was involved with falconry as a teen-ager, said newspaper articles about the falcon releases at the Brown plant spurred his interest.

He contacted Gary Michaels, curator of birds at the Louisville Zoo, and in 1994 the zoo put up a falcon nest box on the plant's single, towering stack.

It wasn't until two years ago, about the time of the first releases at Ghent, that Bethany began seeing falcons near the Trimble plant -- sometimes one, sometimes two, but never an obvious pair. Then this year, a pair showed up in mid-March, he said.

It soon became apparent that they were planning to stay. But the pair ignored the nest box, which is 320 feet up the stack. Instead, they have made their home in a round opening 18 feet in diameter on the other side of the stack. The opening leads to an unused flue.

Covered with a wooden latticework, the opening allows the stack to be connected easily to a never-built second generating unit at the plant, LG&E spokesman Joel Reuter said. There are no plans to build the unit, he said.

Bethany has put up peregrine posters around the plant and enlisted other plant workers to help him keep an eye on the falcons.

"A lot of the employees have gotten a big interest in this," Bethany said. "They watch them all the time."

The falcons' behavior changed around April 7, suggesting the female had laid eggs, Bethany said. The birds now stay on the nest in shifts, with the female doing most of the incubation, he said.

That was the pattern one morning last month. When Bethany and some visitors arrived, the female was perched on girders near the smokestack. A bit later, as dense fog lifted, she spotted a turkey vulture and dive-bombed it. While vultures usually soar in lazy circles, this one was flapping for all it was worth as the angry falcon gave chase.

The female finally returned to the nest site and the male emerged. For a few minutes both falcons were visible, then the female ducked into the opening and male took wing, turned a few laps around the plant's huge cooling tower and went off in search of breakfast.

Burford, the state's falcon specialist, said the male is probably the same bird that was seen around the Trimble plant last year. It was released at Ghent in 1997.

Peregrines tend to select nest sites in familiar habitat, and power plants have been common release sites -- and then nesting sites -- in many states, she said.

While the hole in the smokestack is a reasonable facsimile of the ledges and small caves that are the peregrines' natural nesting habitat, the 6-foot-wide ledge inside it lacks a really good spot to lay eggs, Burford said. Once nesting season is over, the falcons "are going to get some serious home improvements" in the way of a gravel-covered nesting platform, she said.

The falcons are likely to return to the nest site next year, Burford said.

That has certainly been the case with Kentucky's other nesting pair, now in at least their third season of nesting in Louisville on the underside of the Kennedy Bridge.

Before their nest was confirmed in 1997, peregrine falcons had not nested in Kentucky since the late 1940s. Habitat loss and pesticide exposure wiped them out east of the Mississippi River by the 1960s and left only a few pairs in the lower 48 states.

But peregrines have made a remarkable comeback in the last 20 years, benefiting from bans on certain pesticides and aggressive captive breeding and reintroduction programs.

Several hundred pairs of peregrines now nest in the eastern United States -- so many that their status was upgraded from endangered to threatened last year. Many of them are on city skyscrapers and at power plants, which, with their abundant populations of pigeons and starlings, have proved to be ideal peregrine habitat.

Reintroduction efforts in Kentucky began in 1993 and 1994, when 20 birds were released in Lexington. Releases then shifted to the power plants.

Another release is planned in Lexington this year, Burford said. Efforts then will shift to getting falcons back into their natural habitat, in places like the Red River Gorge and the Kentucky River Palisades, she said.

Burford said the pair at Trimble is special because they are the first evidence that Kentucky's reintroduction work is beginning to bear fruit. The pair in Louisville appeared in 1992, before Kentucky had released any peregrines.

Check out live Falcon-cam, a nest on a Pittsburgh skyscraper.  Maybe some day, Louisville will have its own to view the Second Street Bridge Falcons.

Published Tuesday, May 4, 1999, in the Herald-Leader

Compact reached on Black Mountain Deal ends further mining near top

By Lance Williams
SOUTHEASTERN KENTUCKY BUREAU

Environmentalists and coal companies reached an agreement last night that will halt further strip mining and logging near the top of Black Mountain, the state's highest peak.

The agreement was reached after a four-hour conference call yesterday afternoon. The final agreement was signed by most of the parties around 7:30 last night.

Three parties to the agreement still need to give their approval before the deal becomes final, said Tom FitzGerald, an attorney representing Kentuckians For The Commonwealth. KFTC, an environmental group, filed a petition last year asking the state to declare parts of the mountain unsuitable for mining.

The details of the agreement are expected to be announced today at a press conference in Harlan County. Students from Wallins Elementary School and Evarts High School in Harlan County and Rosenwald-Dunbar Elementary School in Jessamine County are expected to be on hand for the announcement. The students have been lobbying officials to keep coal companies from mining or logging near the top of Black Mountain.

Yesterday's negotiations helped solidify a tentative agreement reached by the parties last month.

``I think there were legitimate values on both sides of the table that needed to be satisfied,'' Susan Lawson, an attorney with offices in Harlan and Pineville who represents Jericol Mining Co., said last night. ``I think if either side had been unreasonable, we would not have this agreement.''

Under the agreement, Jericol will minimize a hollow fill site on Razor Fork in Harlan County near their coal mining operation, enhance sediment control and monitoring of the streams near its current mining operation, and reforest the land after the current operation is complete.

Lawson said the hollow fill site was the hardest issue to resolve during the four days of intense negotiations.

A hollow fill site is used for storing excess dirt that is collected during a strip mining operation. Before the agreement, Jericol wanted to create a hollow fill that would have included more than 6 million cubic yards of dirt. KFTC didn't want a hollow fill at all. Under the agreement, the hollow fill will be about half that size.

The agreement also requires the parties to work toward selling or donating to the state some of the timber and coal on the 26-mile-long mountain, which straddles the Kentucky-Virginia state line.

The next step will be negotiations for the mineral and timber rights between the owners of the property involved in the deal and the state.

Lawson said the owners and the state will have six months to negotiate terms under the agreement. If problems arise in the negotiations, it could possibly jeopardize the agreement, but Lawson said that is unlikely.

The agreement ends months of dispute over the future of Black Mountain. Last year, Jericol applied to expand mining on the mountain to within a quarter-mile of the summit.

That request was put on hold late last year when KFTC submitted the petition to block further mining and asked that the land be declared unsuitable for mining.

A June 3 public hearing was scheduled for state officials to discuss the petition, but yesterday's agreement eliminates the need for that meeting. Officials with the Department of Natural Resources were involved in the negotiations and approved of the deal, Lawson said.

Under the tentative deal, the parties agreed that the portion of the mountain above 3,800 feet -- plus a 200-foot vertical buffer -- would be free of logging or mining. Sustainable forestry practices would be required between 3,000 and 3,600 feet. The mountaintop would be available to biologists, botanists and other researchers, but not to the public.

Acid spill poisons Red River

By Frank E. Lockwood
NORTHEASTERN KENTUCKY BUREAU

SLADE -- A semi-truck loaded with hydrochloric acid crashed and overturned near the Red River yesterday, poisoning the stream and closing Natural Bridge State Resort Park for about four hours. Officials estimate that 1,800 gallons of the highly corrosive acid poured into the river's middle fork after the 7:55 a.m. crash, polluting one of the state's most scenic waterways. Nobody was injured, but the chemicals proved deadly for thousands of river residents: bluegill, crappie, minnows, darters, rainbow trout, small-mouthed bass and others. ``I don't know of much that can survive ... unless it can get out on the bank and a fish can't do that,'' said Tom Gabbard, who is with the state's environmental response team. Soft-shelled turtles survived by climbing on shore. ``They weren't dead, but they were definitely getting out of the water,'' said Lew Kornman, a state Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist who surveyed the damage.

Throughout the day, officials poured truckloads of ground limestone into the river to help neutralize the acid.

The leak forced park officials to evacuate campers and lodge guests. About 90 people were told to leave after a toxic plume began forming above the wrecked truck.

They were taken to a rest area near the Mountain Parkway, about two miles away.

Officials closed down Ky. 11 -- also known as Natural Bridge Road -- from the Mountain Parkway to Glencarin Road. That closed off the main route into and out of Lee and Owsley counties.

Portions of Ky. 11 remained closed yesterday evening.

The driver of the truck, Eric D. Richard, 33 of Dunbar, W.Va., walked away from the wreck without injuries. Richard wasn't cited.

``From everything I've heard, there's nothing he could do,'' Kentucky State Police Sgt. Robert Motley said. ``He slowed down around a curve and just lost control.''

Witnesses said speed did not appear to be a factor, Motley said.

The tractor-trailer tanker belongs to DJ Services of Dunbar, W. Va., and was holding about 4,000 gallons of a hydrochloric acid solution.

Company officials declined to comment yesterday.

Fish and wildlife officials say the company could be billed for the cost of the cleanup and for the amount of environmental damage done. But it's too early to tell what the total bill will be.

They predicted the spill won't cause long-term damage to the river. The poisonous chemicals will become diluted as they go downstream, eventually reaching the point -- miles downstream -- where they're harmless.