The Wild American Chestnut Is On Its Way Back
This article, written by Anne Petermann and Steve Taylor, originally appeared in the Spring 2023 edition of Heartwood community‘s biannual newsletter Heartbeat.
By Anne Petermann and Steve Taylor
MAINE – On his land in western Maine, naturalist Bernd Heinrich is surrounded by American chestnut trees and seedlings. More than 1,300 of them grow on his land. Only four of these trees were planted by him, the rest with the help of blue jays and squirrels.
Heinrich, a professor emeritus from the University of Vermont, recently published a new article in Northeastern Naturalist (2022, Vol. 29 Issue 3, p.321-334), that describes “the reproduction, dispersal, and regeneration of a wild population of Castanea dentata (American chestnut), established from four seed-bearing trees planted in a western Maine forest in 1982.”
According to the research, the trees show no obvious signs of the introduced blight that, along with unsustainable logging, devastated populations of American chestnut trees across eastern North America in the early 1900s.
The idea that a blight-resistant American chestnut could emerge naturally has been the goal of the American Chestnut Cooperator’s Foundation (ACCF) for decades. The ACCF, founded in 1985, has a program to cultivate a naturally blight-resistant wild American chestnut through a natural breeding program. Their work continues to this day and includes a specific mission to ensure their wild trees are not contaminated with the genetically engineered variety that is now undergoing a USDA public comment period.
There is currently a formal petition in front of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) requesting permission to freely release genetically engineered American chestnut trees into wild forests. This proposal is of great concern to those working to restore the non-GE wild American chestnut tree who worry that it will threaten the comeback of those wild trees.
Dr. Donald Davis, author of the new book The American Chestnut: An Environmental History and founding member of the Georgia chapter of The American Chestnut Foundation, has challenged the notion put forward by GE chestnut proponents that the American chestnut is “functionally extinct”, noting that there are at least 400 million American Chestnuts in the wild. In a recent opinion piece in The Hill, Dr. Davis, a former Fulbright Fellow and part-time researcher at Harvard Forest, warned of the dangers of releasing a GE variety. He has called the proposal to release GE American chestnuts into wild forests a “dangerous, irreversible experiment”.
Yet this is exactly the proposal being evaluated by the USDA. In 2020 researchers from the SUNY School of Environmental Science and
Forestry (ESF) submitted a request to the USDA to deregulate “Darling 58” GE American chestnuts for unmonitored, widespread release in US forests.
If approved, this would be the first time in the history of the world that a genetically engineered plant was deliberately released into the wild with the express intent of spreading and contaminating a native species.
Organizations representing tens of millions in the US and globally have endorsed the demand to the USDA to reject the D58 GE American chestnut tree.
“This is a nutty proposal, which seeks to use an ecological tragedy to rationalize the use of genetic engineering in forestry,” said Rachel Smolker of Biofuelwatch. “It has nothing to do with forest health and everything to do with paving the way for use of genetically engineered trees in commercial forestry plantations. It is a Trojan Horse made of GE chestnut wood.”
NOTE Anne Petermann is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of GJEP and Steve Taylor is the Press Secretary.
LEARN MORE: Listen to an interview with Anne Petermann, Executive Director of GJEP.
TAKE ACTION: To find out more, visit the Campaign to STOP GE Trees website.
