{"id":958,"date":"2017-07-27T15:12:02","date_gmt":"2017-07-27T22:12:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/inspiration\/?p=958"},"modified":"2017-07-27T15:12:02","modified_gmt":"2017-07-27T22:12:02","slug":"ways-means-attitudes-toward-methods-restoring-american-chestnut-trees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/inspiration\/2017\/07\/27\/ways-means-attitudes-toward-methods-restoring-american-chestnut-trees\/","title":{"rendered":"Ways and Means: Attitudes Toward Methods of Restoring American Chestnut Trees"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe Christmas Song\u201d or \u201cChestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire<\/a>\u201d by Bob Wells and Mel Torm\u00e9 is an iconic song in American culture, but most Americans will never experience a chestnut roast (at least not with American chestnuts).<\/p>\n

A mighty blight<\/h3>\n

The American chestnut was a widespread North American native tree that covered nearly 200,000 miles of Appalachian forest<\/a>. In 1904, the American chestnut trees in the Bronx Zoo were dying from a then unknown disease, Chestnut Blight<\/a>. In the next forty years, Chestnut Blight spread across the estimated 4 billion American chestnut trees. Now American Chestnut trees are seen only as giant stumps, juveniles never reaching maturity, and rarely, adult fruit-bearing trees.<\/p>\n

Since the decline of the American chestnut<\/a>, Appalachian forests have changed. Chestnuts have been replaced by oaks, and it is likely that many organisms that relied on the chestnut trees for food or shelter have had to adapt to new conditions or have been displaced. The loss of the chestnut also led to the loss of financial income for many Appalachian people. In addition to chestnuts as a food source, the American chestnut provided decay resistant timber and tannins for tanning hide. The American chestnut and its decline is remembered through oral and written history. Members of older generations from Appalachia tell stories of enormous trees and later forests of white wooden chestnut skeletons.<\/p>\n

Restoring the chestnut<\/h3>\n
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Josh skiing in the mountains of Big Sky, Montana.<\/p><\/div>\n

The restoration of the chestnut is an active project that faces many challenges. First, few Americans have seen an American chestnut tree, and few are familiar with their decline via Chestnut Blight. Since the restoration of the American chestnut would require policy changes and action across 200,000 miles, spanning multiple state governments, it is necessary to assess the extent the public might disfavor or favor this restoration. Our guest this week,Josh Petit<\/a> from\u00a0Forest Ecosystems and Society<\/a>, is seeking to understand the attitudes of Americans toward the chestnut restoration. In particular, Josh is surveying a sample of the US population to compare attitudes toward a controversial method of chestnut restoration, \u00a0the use of genetic engineering.<\/p>\n

Ways and Means<\/h3>\n

You may be familiar with genetic engineering to modify the genome of an organism to achieve a specific goal. Many of the crops we eat have in some way been modified to aid harvest, growth, and\/or resistance to pests and disease. The methods for restoring the American chestnut are:<\/p>\n