Bagger 288 (and its sibling, Bagger 293) are probably the biggest machines which move freely on soil. They're about 225 m long, 96 meters tall and weigh 14 200 tons.

In the length category, the F60 overburden conveyor bridge (which moves on rails) is (was?) several times bigger, at 502 m length. It weighed less, however, at 13,600 tons.

Bagger 288

There are time lapses of this machines movement from satellite / aerial photography and you will see that the soil becomes green again.

Most of the forests in Germany aren’t truly old growth tho. Instead it’s basically all wood plantations

Where I live they are required to rehabilitate the land afterwards, but usually that's after the mine has been running for like 30+ years and by the time they shut down, they do some weird financial trickery and declare bankruptcy despite having made millions in profits the previous decades and then they just walk away and tax payers need to clean up.

Why do we let mining companies completely rape the land and replace nothing?

The government spend billions to brainwash people and turn them complicit. Check out the "germany rearming" threads to see how even on lemmy plenty of people are happy with the raping.

Here in the UK I know of lots of old mines and quarries that, because the ground is inherently unstable once the mining has finished, the land gets reclaimed as a nature reserve. Think nice walks, wildflowers, native trees, marshlands etc. A lot of effort goes into making habitats for insects, birds and animals.

Whether or not it is all paid for by the mining companies, I don't know.

Well, not 100% on this, but maybe because we're an overaged society that elects corrupt politicians rather than accept that change in lifestyle is necessary? Or maybe it is the brainwashing of the Springer-press that continues to vilify the Greens. Maybe a mix of both.

It will be turned into a giant lake once they are done mining. You burn a lot of volume and filling it wil soil again is just not possible

They do backfill, but they obviously lose quite a bit of volume in the process, so they cannot completely fill the hole. The remaining part is usually flooded.

[ilmango intro music] 🥭🥭🥭

Bagger Bagger!

I hate so much how accurate this is as a metaphor for how many politicians deal with the fascist AfD.

Those photos are from planes.