chestnut blight

Cassie Stark, TACF’s mid-Atlantic science coordinator, says her region is seeing specific challenges from climate change on top of the chestnut blight they’re already facing.

When the 1904 chestnut blight hit, Flora was nearly a decade into her career at the USDA.

American chestnuts were once the dominant tree species in the Eastern United States, until the chestnut blight of the early 1900s killed almost all of them.

“You’ve got the American chestnut blight and the Dutch elm disease, but this seems extraordinarily rapid and severe.”

"You've got the American chestnut blight and the Dutch elm disease, but this seems extraordinarily rapid and severe."