The American Chestnut Foundation

But in the early 1900s, blight was imported to the eastern United States with some Chinese chestnut trees.

Mark Double, a retired researcher at West Virginia University who works with the state chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation, explains.

The fungus found a cousin to Chinese chestnuts that had absolutely no resistance.

So over the course of about 50 years, we lost 4 billion trees.

And it was just a tragic loss for the American forest system.

Well, in Mason County, West Vir- and it's been that way, but, uh, there's an American Chestnut Society, and they're tr- you know, they have tried over the course of generation after generation to, um, find chestnut trees that have defied the, uh, the blight.

And here in West Virginia, in Mason County, West Virginia, there is a place called the Clements State Nursery.

And going back to the 1970s, there is a stand of American chestnut trees that have grown and thrived and have not blighted.

They eventually landed here with my predecessors, Bill and Chuck, who we talked about.

And then Herb went on to help found a group, a nonprofit at the time, called the New York Chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation.

Now it's under a different name called American Chestnut Restoration Incorporated.

But this group really started the whole project-

Apparently, two trees got confused at some point.

Is that right? The Darling 58 and Darling 54, it sounds like we're talking about the robots in Ex Machina here, so I'm trying to, trying to understand.

And perhaps some sort of tiff with the American Chestnut Foundation.

I can't imagine, first of all, how you keep track of all this in the first place, but I guess what happened, is that sort of thing inevitable in this kind of work? And how do you proceed from there, again, knowing that then Sophia's gotta deal with all the people who are like, "You're putting the genetically modified stuff in the ground." H- how do you-- how did you navigate that, and how do you continue to do that?

But progress was slow, and the American chestnut seemed fickle.

It's almost like it doesn't want to succeed, says Michael Gergen, president and CEO of the American Chestnut Foundation.

The SilvaBio tour group climbed into pickup trucks and drove through a landscape of red barns, churches, and signs warning cars to slow down for horse carts.

The next stop was a conservation orchard, home to wild, unmodified American chestnut trees sent in from all over the country.

This isn't the first time emotions about the American chestnut have run hot.

Devotees still remember the germplasm wars of the 1990s, a spat over who got access to crossbred seeds.

Last year, the American Chestnut Foundation, a nonprofit, fractured because of an argument about the SUNY Darlings.

While some members saw transgenics as the best approach, others had doubt about the science.

There have been a number of organizations that have been working to try to come up with a blight-resistant chestnut.

The American Chestnut Foundation developing the hybrid tree and donating the seeds.

Welcome to

year two of the Thousand Chestnut Challenge.