COAL LAKE - Coal miners painstakingly picked their way around woody draws and a small lake to save a special place for wildlife and the public.

In this case, Falkirk Mining Co. miners picked their way with a dragline - on the scale of using an excavator to cut a birthday cake - to spare 14 acres of ash, oak and aspen trees and a 162-acre lake in rural McLean County, about four miles southeast of Underwood.

The verdant oasis was inside an active coal lease, and land around it was stripped down 80 feet to uncover and remove lignite burned at the Great River Energy power plant nearby.

Jeremy Eckroth, an environmental specialist at Falkirk, said saving land features is more expensive than mining through them.

"It's difficult, if you've seen the size of a dragline, going around woody draws like that," he said. "It took longer to go around it than it would have to mine through that area."

Coal Lake and the trees were part of a mitigation deal worked out between the coal company, its Great River partner and the North Dakota Department of Transportation.

In one of those win-win situations, Falkirk and Great River Energy were able to save a prime piece of wildlife habitat at the same time the department needed it.

DOT director Frances Ziegler said the department will use the Coal Lake land as the "last piece of the puzzle" in replacing some 8,000 acres of no-mow areas it had established along highways 2 and 83.

The Legislature banned the no-mow zones, primarily because landowners wanted the hay and grass production. Since DOT had established the no-mow zones to replace wetlands on federally funded highway projects, it had to find another way to mitigate what it had already mitigated.

Ziegler said the Coal Lake land - some 700 acres in all - will wrap up the no-mow mitigation acquisitions, which otherwise have consisted of select State School Land sections.

"It all fell into place," Ziegler said. "They did an amazing job of saving it. The (coal) land management group saw the value of having those acres for wildlife."

After it's transferred to the DOT, Coal Lake and the surrounding acreage will be managed by the state Game and Fish Department as a Wildlife Management Area.

Game and Fish spokesman Randy Kreil said it will be managed like other wildlife areas, including the mitigated State School Lands sections, except that rifle hunting will be prohibited until the mining equipment has retreated a safe distance.

"It's a wonderful project," Kreil said. Besides hunting, the small lake and woodlands will be available for other public uses like photography, berry picking and hiking, he said.

David Straley, spokesman for Falkirk Mining Co., said the land transfer will be made as soon as possible, but public access could be a ways off.

Reclamation work has started in the area, but the Public Service Commission has to approve an early reclamation bond release.

The PSC also will be asked to change the post-reclamation land use from mining to recreational, Straley said.

Eckroth, the mine environmental specialist, said reclamation is already starting to look good around the lake. The deep pits are gone, grass is being reestablished and it already resembles what it one day will be.

"There's a lot of wildlife. It's like a refuge out there," he said.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 701-748-5511 or lauren@westriv.com.)