For generations, the American Chestnut dominated East Coast forests—a tree vital to both wildlife and humans and prized for its bountiful nuts and rot-resistant lumber. Around the turn of the 19th century, a devastating blight began to wreak havoc on the species, wiping out an estimated four billion trees. Today American Chestnuts rarely survive to maturity, making them functionally extinct.
"The trees [are] living in the understory of the forest…re-sprouting and dying back over and over again," says Jared Westbrook, director of science at the American Chestnut Foundation.
