Mario Tama / Getty Images

An explosive is detonated at an A & G Coal Corporation surface mining operation in the Appalachian Mountains on April 16, in Wise County, Va. Critics refer to this type of mining as 'mountaintop removal mining' which has destroyed 500 mountain peaks and at least 1,200 miles of streams while leading to increased flooding. The Appalachians are some of the oldest mountains on Earth.

Mario Tama / Getty Images

An explosive is detonated at an A & G Coal Corporation surface mining operation in the Appalachian Mountains on April 16, in Wise County, Va.

Mario Tama / Getty Images

A & G Coal Corporation surface mining operations continue in the mist in the Appalachian Mountains on April 18, in Wise County, Va.

These frames reminded me of a 2009 piece by Yale Environment 360 and MediaStorm entitled Leveling Appalachia: The Legacy of Mountaintop Removal Mining.

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By Alissa Figueroa
NBC News

ELKO -- In almost every way Nevada is still reeling from the recession. It has the highest unemployment rate in the country at almost 13 percent, and one of the highest foreclosure rates. But in the northeast corner of the state, almost 500 miles from the Vegas strip, life is suddenly very good.

In Nevada's gold country the global boom that’s pushed gold prices to an all-time high – currently hovering around $1,700 per ounce -- brought an influx of jobs to mining towns like Elko, Nev., population 18,000.

Devin Judy can attest to that. The 22-year-old combat veteran landed a steady job driving one of the massive trucks that hauls thousands of pounds of earth at the Newmont Mining Corporation’s Gold Quarry mine, just 26 miles outside Elko.

Devin Judy, 22, a combat veteran, has landed a steady job driving trucks that haul thousands of pounds of earth at the Newmont Mining Corporation's Gold Quarry mine.

Judy was unemployed for three months after returning from a deployment to Iraq with the Idaho National Guard.

“[I was] trying to find my place back in society, trying to provide for my family, provide a better lifestyle and trying to progress in life,” said Judy. “We were worried about all those things.”

There were few permanent, steady jobs back in Idaho. “No careers,” he said, sitting near his 22-foot-tall truck at the mine. “This is a career.”

Judy makes around $60,000 a year hauling dirt and rocks speckled with microscopic flecks of gold through the mine (there’s 130 tons of dirt for every ounce of gold the mine produced). That’s enough money to comfortably support his young family -- a wife and 18-month-old daughter who relocated with him from Idaho Falls two and a half months ago.

Judy is one of about 30 military veterans recruited last year to work at the Newmont mines that surround Elko. Newmont brought on about 600 employees in 2011, and is expecting to make another 600 hires this year.

In Elko, Nev., the high price of gold has created a bevy of mining jobs.

“It's a nice place to be,” said Richard Martinez, a vice president of human resources for Newmont. “It makes for an exciting atmosphere, that’s for sure, compared to some of the other things going on in this country.”

Would-be miners face tough competition for jobs, housing

Leading a jobs boom is not without challenges. With the average salary for a metal mine worker in Nevada around $86,000, thousands are clamoring for these jobs -- some 34,000 people applied for the 600 positions that opened in Newmont’s Nevada mines last year. Finding the highly skilled workers needed for many mining positions has led recruiters to military bases across the country, where they can find veterans fresh from tours in Iraq and Afghanistan who have extensive heavy machinery training.

Newmont is also recruiting workers from closing mine sites (as far away as Missouri and Tennessee), and has a partnership with six research universities to attract and train engineers and geologists.

But finding housing in Elko for the new arrivals has proven more difficult than finding qualified workers. The four RV parks in town are booked solid, as are most of the motels, originally built to house tourists visiting local casinos.

At Double-Dice RV Park, the largest in town, all but 13 of the park’s 143 spots are reserved for long-term guests, some staying as long as six months to a year while they work at the mine. Normally, said owner Dean Vavak, only 90 or so of the park’s spaces are booked for long-term stays.

“We get calls all the time,” said Vavak. “We have to turn people away, actually.” In fact, his park is running a wait-list for long-term tenants.

Mining companies invest in Elko

Elko Mayor Chris Johnson knows the housing shortage is something his government has to take on for Elko to grow sustainably. But getting financing from banks to build big developments has been a challenge, he said. This is still Nevada, after all, the epicenter of the nation’s housing crisis. And there’s always the possibility that gold prices could plummet, as they did in the early 2000s, when gold went down to $250 an ounce, and the mines shed workers.

“We're based on mining; it’s well over 50 percent of our economy,” said Johnson. “There's no question that if it plummets and the mines just couldn't make the ends meet that it's going to affect Elko.”

The mining companies, however, are willing to invest in Elko’s growth. Developer Pedro Ormaza was asked by another company working in the area, Barrick Gold Corporation, to build a 200-unit apartment complex on the outskirts of town to help alleviate the housing crunch. Barrick is funding the project.

“As soon as I get a building built it's occupied the next day, with people usually leaving a motel room,” said Ormaza. “[They’re] moving up from a motel room to an apartment, and hopefully in the future they can move into a house.”

That’s the future that Devin Judy, the veteran-turned-mine-worker, sees for himself and his family in Elko. Judy is renting a house a half-hour drive from the mine, after spending his first three weeks in town in a motel room with his wife and baby. But they just got a new puppy, and hope to buy their own home in the next six months.

“I feel fortunate. That's for sure,” said Judy. “I know a lot of Americans out there don't.”

Don Bills / USGS

Tribes and environmentalists oppose allowing new uranium mines like this one, the Kanab North mine, which is located just north of Grand Canyon National Park. It and other mines with existing claims are not affected by the Interior Department's decision.

The Obama administration on Monday announced a 20-year ban on new mining on federal lands near Grand Canyon National Park, saying the move would allow current mining to continue while officials monitor potential impacts.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar made the announcement after an area covering 1 million acres had been opened up under the Bush administration, mostly for uranium mining.

"The withdrawal maintains the pace of hardrock mining, particularly uranium, near the Grand Canyon," Bureau of Land Management Director Bob Abbey said in a statement, "but also gives the department a chance to monitor the impacts associated with uranium mining in this area. It preserves the ability of future decision-makers to make thoughtful decisions about managing this area of national environmental and cultural significance based on the best information available."

Republican lawmakers from Arizona had blasted temporary bans imposed by Salazar in 2009 and again last year., arguing that hundreds of jobs will be lost. They are also backing legislation to block Salazar's order.

The mining industry said the decision was driven by politics, not science. "The administration’s announcement is not supported by the findings of its own impact analysis, which provided no evidence to justify a massive withdrawal of land," National Mining Association President Hall Quinn said in a statement.

Environmental groups praised the move, noting that the Colorado River, which runs through the Grand Canyon, is the source of drinking water for 26 million Americans.

"Secretary Salazar has defended the Southwest's right to plentiful, clean water and America's dedication to one of our most precious landscapes," said Dusty Horwitt, senior counsel for the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based advocacy group.

"Despite significant pressure from the mining industry, the president and Secretary Salazar did not back down," added Jane Danowitz, U.S. public lands director for the Pew Environment Group.

Salazar has said that uranium, which is used in nuclear power reactors, remains an important part of a comprehensive energy strategy. But he said the Grand Canyon is a national treasure that must be protected.

The Grand Canyon attracts more than 4 million visitors a year and generates an estimated $3.5 billion in economic activity, Salazar said. Millions of Americans living in cities such as Phoenix and Los Angeles rely on the Colorado River for clean drinking water.

The Interior Department emphasized that the ban would not affect 3,200 mining claims already staked in the area near the Grand Canyon.

Supporters of the ban say any increase in mining jobs is not worth risks to the Colorado River, lands considered sacred by American Indian tribes or wildlife habitat. A mining mishap also could be disastrous for tourism in one of the nation's most-visited parks.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Nevada Department of Wildlife

Hundreds of dead birds that were found inside Nevada mining claim markers are displayed.

Armed with a legal provision that took effect this month, a bird conservation group is urging state residents to pull out thousands of old mining claim markers made out of PVC to prevent more birds from entering what look like nests, but which instead are thin, slippery death traps.

"It is certainly possible and perhaps even likely that a million or more birds have needlessly died in these pipes," George Fenwick, president of American Bird Conservancy, said in a statement issued Tuesday. That number is based on Nevada having more than one million mining claims on federal land.

The legal provision enables "anyone to pull up claim marker stakes that are improperly set and act as bird-killing traps," the group stated. Having taken effect on Nov. 1, the provision is part of a 2009 law that invalidated any claim with an open-ended marker.

Nevada Department of Wildlife

Mining claim markers like these are death traps for birds.

"Small birds often see the opening of the pipe markers as a hollow suitable for nesting," it added. "After perching on the pipes, the birds then enter the hole only to become trapped because the walls of the pipes do not allow them to extend their wings and fly out and are too smooth to allow them to grapple their way up the sides. Death from dehydration or starvation in the hot, dry Nevada desert climate then soon follows. Other animals such as lizards also meet the same fate."

The most frequent victims are ash-throated flycatchers and mountain bluebirds, the group said, while other species include woodpeckers, sparrows, shrikes, kestrels, and owls.

The Nevada Department of Wildlife and the federal Bureau of Land Management earlier this month spent four days removing old markers and plan more removals soon.

Nevada Department of Wildlife

The cap had come off this marker post.

A troubling find was that "about half of those markers that had protective caps put in place at some earlier point in time, now had those caps displaced, on the ground nearby," said state biologist Christy Klinger. "So the hazard from the pipe became re-established."

Fenwick also worries that the state law "provides no meaningful enforcement provisions."

"It is encouraging that we are seeing efforts by local, federal, and state agencies to address the problem," Fenwick said. "However, given the enormous scale of the issue, long-term solutions are required. While Nevada has a large mining industry, the issue goes well beyond their borders to a number of other mining states. Mining claim holders need to be held accountable for their stakes through federal regulatory action: remove your hazardous markers or face fines under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act."

The Nevada Mining Association, for its part, said it supports the law.

"The Nevada Mining Association was pleased to support legislation in the early 90s to outlaw the use of hollow claim markers, and since that time, our members have taken the appropriate steps to replace hollow markers with monuments that cause no threat to birds or other wildlife," association President Tim Crowley told msnbc.com. 

"We understand that despite the original law change there were still large numbers of hollow markers throughout the state," he added. "Therefore, the NVMA was once again pleased to support legislation in 2009 allowing for any remaining hollow markers to be pulled from the ground and laid next to their original location."