Global warming! Immigrant terror! The War on CHRISTMAS!

…may all be alleviated though selective breeding.

When Europeans arrived in the New World, one of the most valuable things they found was the unfathomably large and widespread forests of mature hardwood trees. The forests back in Europe had been heavily harvested long before; to have miles upon miles of free wood – just waiting to be cut down and turned into ships, houses and furniture – was nothing short of miraculous.

And of the various species of trees standing in the forest, the most ubiquitous and valuable was the chestnut. In the swath of land stretching from Maine to Mississippi, one out of every four trees was a chestnut. And what a tree it was! The wood was extraordinarily hard and resistant to rot, so it was excellent for the foundations of buildings. The tree’s fine grain made it perfect for making all kinds of furniture and trim pieces. The nuts of the tree were an important food source to both people and animals, and – best of all – they ripened just in time for the holidays.

But in 1904, disaster struck. Scientists at the New York Zoological Garden noticed a blight among the chestnuts, apparently introduced via an exotic strain of chestnut imported from China. Within a year, the blight had spread some 25 miles west, carried by people, birds and wind. And even traveling at that rate, the blight left almost no survivors. Over the ensuing decades, 4 billion chestnuts, covering some 200 million acres, died. A species that had survived 40 million years was wiped out in less than 40. It was greatest ecological disaster to strike the world’s forests in history.

But now, 100 years later, there might be hope for the chestnut’s resurgence. At the New Hampshire Agricultural Experimentation Station in Madbury, scientists have used a “backcross breeding” method to introduce very small quantities of Chinese chestnut genes into a few remaining American chestnuts, over numerous generations. It has taken 30 years, but this week the American Chestnut Foundation announced the project has generated a small population of trees that are about 95% American, but that carry the blight-resistant characteristics of Chinese chestnuts.

And now they are taking the project out into the real world. The small stock of hybrid trees is being planted on a local farm, and will be monitored for their long-term health. These trees will be joining other experimental tree species planted at the site, which is overseen by the University of New Hampshire and the U.S. Forest Service.

If successful, the Chestnut would join the Bald Eagle as an American icon brought back from the verge of extinction.

And with it would come renewed forest biodiversity, gorgeous desks and dining sets, and roasted Christmas treats for generations to come.