bird's-eye speedwell from Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park, El Dorado, California, United States on March 10, 2012 at 11:45 AM by Jonathan Eisen

Retired conservation officer Derek Pritts introduced himself to a group of Warwick High School students and told them they were about to make history. “We’re going to put some blight-tolerant American chestnut trees in the ground,” Pritts told the students as they ate lunch on a hill above Speedwell Forge Lake. “This will be the first planting in Pennsylvania.” Watching was Lisa Hochreiter, a Warwick agricultural science teacher who 20 years ago planted trees in that same spot not far from Lititz with Pritts and previous pupils. That was part of an ongoing attempt to restore the majestic American chestnut – decimated by a blight introduced to the United States in the early 1900s. “Most of their trees died,” Pritts told students late last month. “Your trees will not. They will not die from the blight. So it’s very important we do it right.” Then off they went to plant 13 Darling54 seedlings. That’s the name of a genetically modified chestnut tree that’s been going through testing for years. Researchers with SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in New York announced in August that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had determined their genetically engineered Darling American chestnut trees are unlikely to pose a threat to other plants. It’s an important step in trying to build back from the blight that destroyed and estimated 3 to 4 billion American chestnuts, delivering a massive blow to forest ecosystems, said Andrew Newhouse, director of the American Chestnut Research & Restoration Project at SUNY. The towering trees were once a dominant species in states like Pennsylvania. “Chestnuts were really unique trees. There are no simple replacements,” Newhouse said by phone. “There aren’t other trees that give such good food so reliably to both people and wildlife. They grew so big and were important parts of the forest. So valuable to pollinators.” The USDA’s recent decision doesn’t mean the tree is ready for the general public. It does mean researchers can start giving seedlings to folks like Pritts, “We’re especially interested in environmental differences,” Newhouse said. “We have a lot of data from New York … where we’ve been planting under permits for years.” Also, thus far it’s been researchers handling the trees. “If we think forward to restoration, it’s not going to be our team that’s doing most of the planting,” he said. “So we want to see how these trees do in different hands. People who are used to planting trees in different ways.” Planting for tomorrow Pritts showed students his method of layering fertilizer and dirt dug from around white pines for a touch of acidity. “Our little tree is going to do great,” declared Warwick junior Sydney Matus in an enthusiastic tone that made it easy to tell she’s a cheerleader. “I’m going to come back one day and say, ‘Kids, I planted that tree,’” she said. Sophomore Carter Valenti’s mother told folks at her job what her son would be planting. “My mom works at a retirement home,” Valenti said. “And a lot of the older people there remember the chestnuts.” Today’s survivors typically don’t compare. They’ll grow, die back, then grow again, Newhouse said. “The cycle doesn’t really offer a lot of hope for the huge, majestic trees that we see pictures of and hear stories about,” he said. The plan is for Darling trees to cross pollinate with some of those and start a new population, Newhouse said. First researchers need tree diversity to see what happens. “That’s what I have here,” Pritts told the students. He motioned to surviving chestnuts from states like Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee as well as Pennsylvania. Pritts is retired from the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission. He’s long been interested in setting things right for the American chestnut and is today associated with the Laurens-New York-based nonprofit American Chestnut Restoration Inc. He told students about the Darling’s additional gene, which encodes an enzyme called oxalate oxidase and comes from wheat. Newhouse said it detoxifies a major component in the “toxic cocktail” that the blight fungus releases into American chestnuts by finding wounds and moving in under bark. While many other plant pathogens consume living tree tissue, the chestnut blight fungus does not, Newhouse said. “In China it would tend to persist at low levels in the environment. And then if a Chinese chestnut died from some other reason, then the blight fungus consumed that dead tissue,” he said. “In the U.S. it became much more aggressive and started killing trees instead of hanging out and waiting for them to die. That’s an oversimplification, but that’s kind of what was happening.” Darling54 means it was the researchers’ 54th try, Pritts said. “People tried many times to recreate that, and it’s never been done again,” he told students. “So, whatever your belief system is, it’s a gift from wherever. From one will come many.” Nonprofit local news isn't free! It takes reporters, editors, and resources to do this work right. Your donation keeps that work alive. MAKE YOUR DONATION TODAY He asked if anyone fishes for golden rainbow trout and got some nods. Those didn’t exist until one just appeared at a West Virginia fish hatchery, he said. “Every golden rainbow trout had a single ancestor. A female trout in West Virginia in 1954,” Pritts told the students. “This will be the same with the American chestnut trees.” Breeding against blight Newhouse was asked about gene modification on NPR’s “Weekend Edition” in September. “As I don't have to tell you, Mr. Newhouse, genetically modified organisms are controversial,” said host Scott Simon. “Critics … say there’s just not enough research into how they could affect us. I wonder what you say.” Newhouse told him that the tree has been extensively tested. “Why not just old-fashioned breeding?” Simon continued. That’s more complicated because of all the genes that go into blight resistance, Newhouse briefly explained for the short NPR segment. He elaborated further for LNP | Lancaster Online. Starting in the ’80s, the push was on to create hybrids with Chinese chestnuts far less bothered by blight, Newhouse said. At the time, thinking was that two or three Chinese chestnut genes were responsible for resistance. “Conceptually, it’s not that difficult to do enough crosses and make sure all three genes from that chestnut end up in your hybrid offspring,” he said, adding that would allow for breeding of the right combination of traits, making it resistant, but visually most like an American chestnut. A group called the American Chestnut Foundation has been leading that charge since the 1980s, Newhouse said. But as DNA technology improved over the last decade, scientists learned there are probably 10 to 12 different genes working together against blight, he said. “That program’s still going,” he said. “There’s still reason for hope that the same technology that allowed us to understand that can allow that program to improve.” But there are limitations. “You could get one tree that has just the right combination of traits,” he said. “It could have really good blight resistance and look like an American chestnut.” But that one tree, if crossed with a struggling wild American chestnut, would average only five of those blight-resistant genes, he said. “Then you’re back to that same kind of roll-the-dice mix of traits that don’t offer as much promise for blight resistance in future generations,” he said. Beyond chestnuts While Newhouse said he views American chestnut restoration as a valid goal in and of itself, he’s thinking bigger picture. “Even 40 years ago, walking through a forest, you didn’t see big holes where the chestnuts used to be,” he said. “The resilience of other species had kind of filled the gap.” But now there are things like the emerald ash borer, the hemlock woolly adelgid and beech leaf disease. “There’s just this ever-growing list of threats,” Newhouse said. “It’s going to be harder and harder for the forest to just respond, fill in and be resilient.” Newhouse said he believes people have a responsibility to use all available tools to assist. “Biotechnology, or genetic engineering, is one of those tools,” he said. “We really have a responsibility to do everything we can to protect native trees and forests so that they can be with us long into the future.” Pritts and the student at Speedwell assembled plastic protectors to guard the seedlings from becoming animal snacks. “I’m proud of you guys,” Hochreiter told students. She’s hoping these trees fare better than those planted 20 years ago, but concedes some nerves as she looks at a seedling that’s just a few inches tall. Its spindly stature stands in stark contrast to its lofty mission. “It reminds me of the end of the Lorax where they hand them the seed,” Hochreiter said. “That’s exactly what this is.”

Retired conservation officer Derek Pritts introduced himself to a group of Warwick High School students and told them they were about to make history.

Veronica arvensis (common names: wall speedwell,:592 corn speedwell, common speedwell, rock speedwell, ) is an annual flowering plant in the plantain family Plantaginaceae. The species is a native Eur...

Retired conservation officer Derek Pritts introduced himself to a group of Warwick High School students and told them they were about to make history.