In this time of concern for our environment, and the appearant concern for to much carbon dioxide around, why is there not more concern for the health of our forest trees, our shade trees, and our crop trees?
One concern that I have is that many of our fine tree species are having a very hard time just surviving.
Take for example the plight of the American Chestnut tree. At one time, the American Chestnut tree was a true forest monarch. Not only did this tree produce a great amount of edible nuts, it was considered a very important timber tree.
Then about 1906, a blight from Asia, was introduced on the East coast of North America. This blight took hold and in a very few years killed millions of these chestnut trees throughout the Eastern forests of North America.
People became alarmed and several groups were formed to fight the blight. They tried cross breeding with the Chinese Chestnut. This produced very poor results, but peope keep trying.
However, no group, that I know of, has really formed a group of pathologists to direct their efforts to find a safe and effective way to kill and eradicate this blight or blights that attack the American Chestnut tree from this planet.
This effort to find a cure for this chestnut blight is a worthy one and we can do it. We have formed a scientific and education non-profit corporation in Washington State to establish a Tree Pathology Research Facility and to fund pathology research to find effective ways to safely control, and in some cases, to eradicate the diseases that harm our forest trees, shade trees, and our crop trees.
