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| Bringing Back
the American Chestnut |
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BRING
BACK THE AMERICAN CHESTNUT
The NFF has supported The American Chestnut Foundation's
tree breeding and education projects in the Southern
Appalachian region since 2002.
| Photo
courtesy of the American Chestnut
Foundation. |
|
For years, Jim Williamson had no idea just how
valuable the 90-foot tree with the big white
flowers in his sugarbush was. "You know," said
the Vermont farmer, "I'd seen it, but what
it was just didn't ring a bell." Williamson's
grandkids curiously picked up the tree's prickly
nuts about five years ago and showed them to
a regional forester, who confirmed that they
were, in fact, from an American chestnut.
American chestnuts once covered 25 percent of
all wooded areas from southern Maine to Alabama
until a century ago when a blight, accidentally
introduced in this country, nearly knocked out
the entire population. Prior to that, American
chestnuts were the most economically important
tree along the Appalachian chain and a keystone
species in a wildlife network that included deer,
bear, turkey, grouse and other smaller animals.
Except for a rogue population spread thinly throughout
the region, today the tree has all but vanished
from the landscape.
There remains hope, though, for the American
chestnut. As Eastern states and communities take
ever-increasing action to restore a landscape
dramatically altered by human development, the
tree has returned to the image people have of
their natural heritage. Thanks to The American
Chestnut Foundation (TACF), someday that image
may become quite real. TACF is leading a movement
on two fronts to bring back the American chestnut.
The Vermont-based group is engaged in a multi-tiered
and multi-state research
| Photo courtesy
of the American Chestnut Foundation. |
|
program to breed a blight-resistant
chestnut that can be reintroduced back into Eastern
forests. At the same time, the group has created
a network of state and regional chapters that
support regional breeding programs, independent
research, and local education projects.
In the early part of the last century, the naturally
rot-resistant tree was used for everything from
framing houses to fence posts. It reproduced
and grew quickly and adapted well to disturbances,
such as fire and clear-cutting. The loss of the
trees hit communities hard, especially during
the Depression when rural families relied on
it and its nuts for income, fuel and sustenance.
Because the wood is preserved so well, the vast
hillsides of dead trees remained viable timber
until they were cut, but once gone, the trees
couldn't recover. (Williamson's grandfather harvested
1 million board feet from the dead trees - enough
to build nearly 70 modest-sized homes - from
his farm one winter.) State and federal foresters,
geneticists and backyard scientists tried for
50 years to breed a blight-resistant American
chestnut in the shadow of tulip poplars, chestnut
oaks and hickories, the trees that have moved
in and taken their place. Unsuccessful, they
gave up by the early 1960s.
In the mid-80s, a group of renowned geneticists
and biologists began working on a new method
called "backcross breeding" in hopes of bringing
back the American chestnut. The process is complicated,
tedious, costly and long-term, but shows definite
signs of success. To continue their work, the
scientists needed a secure source of funding,
and they decided to create The American Chestnut
Foundation.
In 2002, the National Forest Foundation began
supporting TACF's breeding projects in the Southern
Appalachians, one of the organization's most
prolific research areas.
Pollination
Paul Sisco, TACF's Southern Appalachian regional
science coordinator, explains breeding like this:
technicians, usually graduate students, start
the process with those trees that have managed
to escape the blight, such as the one on the
Williamson's farm. Flowers are covered to keep
them from pollinating on their
| Photo courtesy
of the American Chestnut Foundation. |
|
own. The covers
are removed to carefully breed the tree with
the blight-resistant Chinese chestnut. The nuts
produced in late fall are collected and stored
until March when they are then planted, usually
on the farm or yard of a TAFC volunteer. Again,
the trees are bred, this time with the most blight-resistant
American chestnuts. The ensuing generation of
nuts is raised on seed orchards.
From those, the most highly resistant trees are
intercrossed. The trees produced will then be
planted back in the woods, as the first generation
of reintroduced American chestnuts.
"Timing is critical," says Sisco. "It takes
a whole lot of effort to do this right, because
if you fail at any one part of the process the
whole thing fails. You have to be at it all the
time."
Last summer, Sisco worked with five graduate
students (whose work was supported by a MAP grant
from the NFF) in Tennessee, North Carolina and
South Carolina to find and map surviving trees
and to study their surrounding geological and
ecological features, to look for clues to their
survival. In October, Sisco and an NFF intern
harvested nuts from an open-pollinated tree in
Great Smoky Mountains National Park, gave a workshop
to county teachers and observed plots with Forest
Service researchers.
"When we do pollinations," Sisco said, "we
try to incorporate as much regional identity
as possible. These trees exist from 500 to 5,000
feet [in altitude] - we want them to be adapted
when we put them back into the forests." He added
that the trees are bred for a variety of ecotypes
and locals. Trees intended for particular altitudes
or locations, such as a certain National Forests,
are bred with trees that already live there.
| Photo courtesy
of the American Chestnut Foundation. |
|
A project for many generations
The biggest challenge in reintroducing a tree
that once dominated the landscape - but that
has been gone for at least two generations - is
that nobody remembers it. Marshall Case, TAFC's
executive director, believes that if you know
something about this tree, no matter your political
leanings, economic standing, race, gender or
ethnicity, you, too, will want to bring them
back.
"This is something for everybody," he says, "something
we can come together and agree on." TAFC, added
Case, is working to develop a network of volunteers
who can look for and document trees (such as
the one on Williamson's farm), to participate
in the crossback breeding process by raising
trees at home and to prepare private and public
forests and communities for reintroduction, which
is expected to begin in about a decade.
"We want to have a viable Eastern forest,
with the chestnut back in it. We know it will
take a long time, but with continued commitment
from organizations like the NFF, we can do something
very good in terms of forest health and local
economies," he said, adding that utility
and building companies have already begun supporting
these projects because of the tree's commercial
potential. "There is value in the timber,
value in the trees for wildlife and carbon sequestration,
and plus, these are beautiful trees." |
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