Exciting Initiative to Advance Forest Health Announced

The U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities (the Endowment) today announced its participation in a bold new initiative, “Advancing Forest Health through Biotechnology.”  Designed to seek new tools to deal with rapidly increasing impacts to forests from exotic pests and diseases as well as native pests that are exploding in the face of changing climactic conditions, Endowment President Carlton Owen said, “We have come to the point where we simply don’t have the luxury of time that affords using only 20th Century tools to deal with 21st Century challenges.”  The initiative, envisioned as a three-year, perhaps $10-million program, will assess the potential for biotechnology to offer a safe and socially-acceptable option for addressing forest health challenges.

While the Initiative will involved literally dozens of partners from social, regulatory and scientific institutions, it will be overseen by a Steering Committee comprised of representatives from the U.S.D.A. Forest Service, Duke Energy and the Endowment – all initiative sponsors – as well as Environmental Defense Fund, The Nature Conservancy and a forest health scientist.  Work to test scientific, social/environmental and regulatory/policy questions about biotechnology will focus on a test organism, the American chestnut, once considered the “King of Trees” in eastern forests but since lost to an exotic fungus.