The Chestnut Tree: Bringing Back an American Icon | William Powell

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] the American chestnut tree is really part of our history and part of our heritage it was one of the most common trees in in the Eastern Force one out for every four trees was an American chestnut is a very large tree a canopy tree it would grow over a hundred feet in height for some record one's going up to ten feet diameter in nineteen and for chestnuts began to die from a strange disease a blind in about fifty years killing over three billion when there's the passion to restore this tree the chestnut project is probably gonna be the first time people have used genetic engineering to make a restoration tree it's going to show how we can use modern technology to solve environmental problems so I'm very hopeful that we can do something that is never been done in human history we're gonna bring her tree back you know chestnut wasn't just another tree ecologist today recognize it is what they call a foundation species wildlife would benefit from this tree it produced a very consistent nut crop there are a few trees that have such a powerful influence on that floor system make up what other species are growing in that forage they have a huge impact on productivity of the forest people from the Native Americans used to harvest and nuts themselves and eat them as well as use the leaves for medicine the early settlers adopted those practices they were more hunter-gatherers than they were farmers they raised a few crops for their own use but they survived off the land just not not only helped feed them it fed their livestock and a big part of their diet was the wild game that was there in such abundance and it was largely because of the chestnut was there they also utilized the wood quite a bit the wood was very straight grained easy to work with it was very wrought resistance they used it everything cradle to coffins folly from cradle to grave farmers realized more income from the American chestnut than any other firearm product in the fall of the year everybody lived in the mountains would gather sacks full of these chestnuts and take them down to the local store and barter it for things they had to have that they couldn't raise like salt coffee or a new pair of shoes for the winter for the kids there would be train loads of chestnuts in the fall hidden to the major cities of the country where you roast them and sell them on the streets I personally think the value of the tree has probably probably had more impact on our history then say the Liberty Bell are the American Eagle both of which I treasured but I think that tree really played an untold role in the development of this country a little over century ago people started importing Asian chestnut trees mainly for orchards and for the yards and stuff when they brought these trees over at that time they didn't realize that they also brought all the microorganisms that were on those trees along with the tree and turns out there was this one fungus called Cripe nectary of parasitic ax that caused a chestnut blight we came here to the United States it jumped off those trees onto the American chestnut and American chestnut had never seen this fungus before and was very susceptible to it and therefore it calls very serious damage to the tree actually killing the tree so if you come in here this is a typical chestnut blight canker okay and once that goes all the way around it will start choking off this above part and what happens this top part probably all be wilted and will die okay so that's it that's what kills the tree right there they believe that the blight started actually on Long Island New York and I was first actually described at the Bronx Zoo logical park from there that was in 1904 and spread through the whole range within about 50 years oh by 1950s it basically hit every place where there was justice from Maine to Georgia and out to Kentucky and westward and pretty much all along the Appalachian Mountains this disaster occurred kind of simultaneously with the Great Depression eventually it killed almost all luckily it did not kill the underground portion of the trees so it still it still is that but it doesn't reproduce and so I think the term will use is functionally extinct my dad witnessed the entire chestnut story from the time of the healthy chestnut forests in his mid life he saw the blind begin to take effect and he saw the forest without the chest so I grew up here in these stories all my life and at a powerful influence on loss of the chestnut was an American tragedy described by ecologist as the worst environmental disaster ever to strike our country [Music] I became a Forester for 42 years and early in my career I could still see the gray ghosts your trunks of the old dead chestnut still spend almost gazing down me as I worked in the woods and I felt so sad about the passion of the truth after my retirement I'm working full-time whatever I can do to try to bring this tree back people have been working for the past hundred years to try to solve this problem light and everything from using fungicides to making fire breaks try to isolate the blight none of those things ever worked [Music] so the mission is actually to develop a blight tolerant of American chestnut tree there's gonna be the first time people have used genetic engineering to make a restoration tree looks like acid is the thing that the fungus uses to attack the tree basically so if you can get rid of that acid the fungus no longer attack a tree so we discovered was there was actually a gene that's found in many different plants called oxalate oxidase this is a gene that actually detoxifies oxalic acid it breaks it down so you know there's a Eureka moment when we discover this is it Wow who can just get this gene into chestnut the fungus to make all the asset at once but the trees is kind of break it down when you put a gene into a tree we use a bacteria called agrobacterium tumefaciens it's a natural genetic engineer found in the environment move genes into plants but it moves it into one cell at a time so in order to get a whole tree you have to regenerate a tree from that single cell and so we have to develop the techniques to do that so are you working on well the idea is you want to get something as close to the original as possible and that's what genetic engineering allows us to do we're not changing very many genes in the tree we're actually adding a couple genes and every other gene in the tree is exactly the same what we're gonna do with these we're gonna actually infect them with the fungus we're gonna knock elate them we got some of the fungus growing right here and we're gonna find out how the gene responds to the fungus so this is one of our experimental orchards for our American chestnut and we have all kinds of chestnuts in here we have pure wild type american we have some Chinese chestnut we have some hybrids but most importantly we have some of our genetically engineered trees in here and so we're growing them out here infecting them with the blight and determining you know does that really enhance blight resistance or not so where we already know we we develop like tolerant trees so that they can survive in the presence of the blight the next step is to get through the regulatory approval because we use genetic engineering which is a highly regulated technique and that's what we're working on this is what the Templeton Foundation is supporting this for so we're developing these petitions that we're going to supply to three different US federal agencies that will hopefully allow us to to distribute the trees eventually for restoration big questions is how is this gonna act in a forest over many decades they wanna make sure that we're gonna put a tree out that is gonna actually benefit the environment and not harm the environment you also want to make sure we're not gonna harm any non-target organisms and that's why we test things as bees and against other insects like caterpillars and aquatic insects and things like that to do each observations I start by netting out the tadpole which is kinda tricky if they move really fast especially as they get bigger we want to see if just not leaf type and specifically whether transgenic leaves have any impact on tadpole development or survival in vernal pool ecosystems kind of temporary ponds that form in forests these little ponds are lined with deciduous leaves and potentially tadpoles could be interacting with chestnut leaves Templeton has allowed us to do our frog experiments to show that our trees are no different than a wild type except for being light resistance in the study we found something out that we weren't really expecting because we were also feeding though that the frogs things like maple leaves beech leaves and when we looked at the development of the frogs they actually did better on the American chestnut in the same maple or beach genetic engineering is not the magic bullet won't solve all problems but it should be one of the tools to be used with all the other tools in the toolbox this is a little baby chestnut from one shoot I got three new pieces last year we produce 1800 trees are a tender nuts about six to seven hundred of those were actually ones that have the gene in it so it's still a small amount right now but it's enough that we can do all the testing we need to do basically have enough diversity they're getting the tree back into the forest is is gonna be a challenge because no one has ever done this type of restoration before it's actually gonna be a century project you're not gonna get it done overnight and it's gonna really rely on the public to do much of the work we don't have the capability to go back and plant 200 million acres but the people out here who hear this story they can help us do that there's a battle raging in our forest with many tree species lost to insects and diseases brought in through world trade chestnut was the first fallen soldier there are many more we've lost American elm we are losing Eastern hemlock in ash trees by the millions with each loss of a species our forests become less resilient now our force are not healthy people think oh the force agreeing they look good but they're not healthy there's all kinds of pests and pathogens out there and it's only gonna get worse with climate change [Music] restoring a tree that's been functionally extinct for many decades it's exciting but maybe even more meaningful in the long term as is thinking about other plants or trees that are threatened there's a lot of potential with the technology to address some of those other kinds of threats it's laying a pathway for how other species can be restored that's the bigger story I believe that'll be the greatest accomplishment that we can make mother nature didn't decide to bring the blight here to the United States Mother Nature didn't wipe out the American chestnut tree we are responsible that's a we were responsible for bringing it back we absolutely have to do this not for ourselves but for those that come after us do any of us want to leave a forest that is much cooler from a diversity standpoint to our kids and grandkids I don't think we have that right I think that if if this can be done we have to do [Music] you

Channel: Templeton World Charity Foundation

Views: 81,530

Rating: 4.5429864 out of 5

Keywords: american chestnut, chestnut trees, genetic engineering, environmental science, the american chestnut foundation, suny esf, trees, Castanea dentata, science, technology, environment

Id: -mhMdUryolU

Length: 14min 44sec (884 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 28 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Iyaoyasao2]

I want some seeds!

[u/bizmarkie24]

Any idea on the timeline for them to get approval from the federal agencies?

[u/dijit4l]

This was a well done video!