In the not so distant past, North America was home to one of the
largest carbon sinks in the world. The great American chestnut
forests — which ranged all the way from Maine to Mississippi and
made up a full 25 percent of the tree canopy in the United
States — were nearly immortal and massive in size, with the
ability to sequester more CO2 than any other known hardwood
tree. Tragically a blight carried over from Asia at the turn of
the century wiped out the entire species by 1950, an estimated 4
billion trees . Until recently the great American chestnut was
nothing but a wistful memory, but recently researchers at the
University of Tennessee created a strain of chestnut that is
virtually identical to the original but incorporates disease-
resistant genes spliced from the Chinese chestnut. The U.S.
Forest Service partnered with the University of Tennessee to the
American Chestnut Restoration Project, and two years ago they
planted the first batch of 500 seedlings in three states to test
the viability of the new