American Chestnut Foundation
Description
The American Chestnut Foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to returning the American chestnut tree to its native range in the eastern United States.
Its strategy combines breeding and biotechnology to develop trees with resistance to chestnut blight and Phytophthora root rot, then restore them to eastern hardwood forests. Work is carried out by a small professional staff together with volunteers organized into state chapters across the tree’s historic range, from Maine to Alabama and west to the Ohio Valley. The foundation also runs education programs, public talks and demonstration plantings to raise awareness of the chestnut’s decline.
The organization was founded in 1983 by plant scientists and volunteers concerned about the loss of the chestnut to disease. In 1989 it established the Wagner Research Farm in Meadowview, Virginia, later expanded into the Meadowview Research Farms, which remain the center of its backcross breeding program. It has partnered with universities and government agencies on research and restoration, and it withdrew its support for the Darling 58 transgenic chestnut cultivar in December 2023 after reporting decreased growth rates and poor heritability of resistance.
Latest news
Dolly Parton: A Life Rooted In Giving
By Jules Smith, TACF Director of Communications When an icon like Dolly Parton passes, the news travels fast and hits hard. She was truly larger than life. I seriously doubt
26 Aug 2026
American Chestnut Inspires at National Museum of Forest Service History
A Bittersweet Before and After Story—large and historically significant American chestnut trees find a new home at the National Museum of Forest Service History. The story of the widely revered American chestnut
21 Aug 2026
Foxwynd Foundation Invests in TACF’s dentataBase
The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF) Secures $135,000 Foxwynd Foundation Fellowship Grant to Modernize ‘dentataBase’ Infrastructure. The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF) announced today that its “dentataBase” modernization project has been selected
4 Aug 2026
The 2026 Photo Contest is Open for Submissions!
Ready to turn your love of the outdoors into bragging rights? The American Chestnut Photo Contest is back for 2026, and we want your best shots of this iconic tree and its hybrids. Bring your camera along on your hikes and adventures, because you never know when the perfect moment will arrive.
7 May 2026
Major New TACF Paper Published in Science
A major new paper published this week in Science marks a turning point in how endangered species can be restored. The research demonstrates that approaches informed by detailed genomic information, long used in agriculture and animal breeding, can be applied at scale to conservation and...
12 Feb 2026
Genomics Offers a Faster Path to Restoration
For more than a century, the American chestnut, once a dominant tree across eastern North American forests, has been devastated by an invasive fungal disease that killed billions of trees in the early 1900s. A new study published in Science shows that modern genomic tools can dramatically...
12 Feb 2026
Similar organizations
World Resources Institute, known as WRI, is an independent research organization working to improve people's lives, protect and restore nature, and...
The Bellona Foundation is an international, science-based environmental organisation headquartered in Oslo, Norway.
The Wilderness Society is an Australian, community-based environmental advocacy organisation working to protect, promote and restore wilderness and...