On November 3, 2020 about forty people from the USDA Forest Service and The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF) gathered virtually. It was the second biennial plan of work meeting between TACF and SRS.

Since the 1990s, the two organizations have worked together on American chestnut (Castanea dentata) restoration. In 2017 and in 2019, they committed to a Biennial Plan of Work that strengthens the partnership.

At the meeting, foresters, researchers, and organization leaders shared the latest advances in genetics and breeding, restoration research, and disease screening.

Since 1983, TACF has been working to restore the American chestnut. Their science strategy is called 3BUR – a reference to chestnut’s three nutritious nuts in a spiky burr. TACF uses traditional approaches (tree breeding), integrated management approaches (biocontrol), and powerful new molecular tools (biotechnology).

Two major diseases decimated American chestnut: chestnut blight (Cryphonectria parasitica) and Phytophthora root rot (Phytophthora cinnamomi). Chinese chestnut is blight resistant. Chinese chestnut and American chestnut have been backcrossed – a breeding process that aims to recover the timber-type form of American chestnut while keeping Chinese chestnut genes for blight resistance.

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Dan Brinkman — a self-described tree nerd — knew he’d hit the jackpot when he was told about a certain tree standing in a cattle pasture near Mount Brydges, Ontario, Canada.

To most, the tree looks like any other. But Brinkman was pretty certain this was an American chestnut, a species that once thrived in southern Ontario, and most of the eastern United States, but has been nearly wiped out by blight in the past century.

“You read in the books about how rare it is and how small most of them are, just a sprout coming off a stump, and to find a tree without a spec of blight on it, that’s like going for a hike in China and seeing a panda bear cross the path in front of you. It’s there, you just don’t expect to see that.”

It’s believed that up to two million American chestnuts once grew in southern Ontario’s Carolinian zone, a stretch of land that covers much of the area from Lake Huron to Lake Erie.

But blight, an insidious tree-killing fungus, has nearly doomed the species. It’s believed there are only about 2,000 wild American chestnuts left in Ontario.

Most found are suckers sprouting up from a stump or hybrids mixed with other chestnut species. But a fully grown chestnut tree about 70 years old and 50 feet tall? That’s rare.

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