PBS Terra. Once towering over eastern U.S. forests, billions of American chestnut trees nourished ecosystems, built homes, and sustained Appalachian communities. But in the early 1900s, a foreign fungus arrived, and within decades, nearly all of them were gone. However, the species never fully vanished. In the forests of Pennsylvania, Shane Campbell-Staton joins Sara Fern Fitzsimmons from The American Chestnut Foundation to track this tree’s strange afterlife and learn the science behind its potential revival. With the help of rare surviving trees, selective breeding, and even gene editing, scientists and volunteers are working to breed blight-resistant trees.
America’s Great Lost Tree Is Finally Returning
