Abstract: The electric power industry has long standing practices for removal of aged and damaged utility power poles, which are not only time consuming, but unsafe for workers. To address this, the present inventors devised better methods, some of which entail cutting off the top portion of an inground utility pole to produce a pole butt, rotating the inground pole butt about its vertical axis to free the pole from the grip of the surrounding earth, and applying a lifting force to the pole butt during and/or after the rotation. Some embodiments implement the method using a rotary coupler, which couples a rotary drive via one or more pole collaring devices and/or one or more pole penetrating devices, to the pole butt, reducing pole butt removal time by at least half according to some estimates, while also improving safety.