A woman with gray hair in a green shirt holds a small tree in a clear box.
Amy Brunner, associate professor at Virginia Tech, holds a small chestnut seeding growing in a plastic box. Her lab is researching the genes that provide blight resistance in chestnut trees. Credit: Roxy Todd / Radio IQ

Episode for November 29, 2024

Pennsylvania’s trees are facing a multitude of threats including fungus, insects, and worms, like the ones that cause beech leaf disease. American chestnut trees once thrived in our region, but 150 years ago a fungus wiped them out. Researchers and advocates are trying to bring them back, but they disagree on how to do it. Plus, we tag along with a crew trying to save hemlock trees from a sap-sucking invasive pest.

A researcher in Ohio was surrounded by hundreds of dead ash trees that the emerald ash borer, a beetle, had wiped out. But in that same forest, she found a lone tree thriving. Could this tree be the key to saving ash from extinction?

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