SUNY-ESF chestnut restoration project aims to revitalize species

Researchers at SUNY-ESF are continuing efforts to restore the American chestnut tree.

SUNY-ESF’s American Chestnut Research and Restoration Project first developed a blight-resistant American chestnut tree in 2014. A blight wiped out roughly 90% of the trees at the beginning of the 20th century.

Now, the project aims to distribute the trees to the public, said William Powell, director of the chestnut project.

“Restoration is not going to happen by us — it’s going to happen by the public,” Powell said. “If people don’t want to plant these trees, we’re not going to have restoration. It’s really going to be up to them to get these back out.”

The project will use a $3.2 million grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation, a philanthropic organization, to support the trees’ distribution. The grant, awarded last month, will support three years of research and fund collaboration with federal agencies.

Members of the project will begin by building a research demonstration forest at the Lafayette Road Experimental Station in Syracuse, one of SUNY-ESF’s properties, said Kaitlin Breda, an administrative assistant for the project.

The location will make chestnut trees accessible to the larger Syracuse area for public tours, she said.

ESF currently has approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that allows them to plant the trees in fenced-in areas on their sites, but they are still awaiting approval from the Department of Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration to begin restoration beyond campus, Breda said

Research forest preparation will start in the summer, and, if approved, the project plans to start distribution in July 2021, Powell said. The project team will also place the trees in educational settings such as botanical gardens, zoos and historic sites, Powell said.

With federal approval, SUNY-ESF plans to distribute trees to their native location along the Appalachian Mountains from Georgia to Maine, he said.

The American chestnut tree is the first tree that has ever been developed for restoration purposes rather than commercial distribution, said Dakota Matthews, a graduate student at ESF.

Federal approval would allow for the distribution of American chestnut seedlings and nuts to other state chapters within the American Chestnut Foundation, he said.

“There are chapters for pretty much every state on the east coast going up and down,” he said. “There are grassroots organizations that are part of the foundation as a whole that are working toward restoration.”

Powell hopes the restoration of the American chestnut tree will bring greater awareness to forest health.

“With climate change and all the invasive pests and pathogens coming in, our forests’ health is really declining,” Powell said. “It’s hard to see when you go out there, but for professionals, they can see that it is declining. We need to start reversing those trends.”