TENNESSEE CHAPTER OF THE AMERICAN CHESTNUT FOUNDATION
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New Oral History Link--recollections of the American chestnut in the olden days. Recent Chestnut-related Events (2008-2009)
Greg Weaver's article on the history of the American chestnut, its demise, and restoration appears in the July/Aug. 2009 edition of The Tennessee Conservationist Magazine. Pollination time at Meadowview, Virginia, 2009--see the photos Check out Janie Becker's photos of the chestnut plantings in Milan, TN and Catoosa Co., GA. (April 2009). Also, see a newspaper article about this planting. On Arbor Day, 2009, Matt Harris and Vic Davis planted American chestnut seedlings in the North Cumberland Wildlife Management Area--see photos of the planting. We need volunteers who like to hike and are interested in inventorying American chestnut trees along the Appalachian Trail. You need not be a TACF member or tree expect to participate in this important scientific project--training will be provided. The May 30, 2009 training session for the Appalachian Trail MEGA-Transect Chestnut Project will be conducted by U.T./Chattanooga professors, Dr. Hill Craddock and Dr. Jennifer Boyd. Click here to learn more about this opportunity. Also note that this event is described in the TN Calendar (above).
On
May 18, 2009, two prominent TN newspapers, Knoxville News Sentinel
and Nashville Tennesseean, printed articles about students from
Lake City Middle School in Anderson County and Campbell County's Elk
Valley Elementary School planting American chestnuts on abandoned
coal mine land atop Zeb Mountain in East TN.
See: Greg Weaver, Tennessee Chapter President, and Leila Pinchot, UT forestry student, represented the TN-TACF Chapter at Oak Ridge's Earth Day Festival on April 25, 2009. Mayor Tom Beehan, Angie Palau (Earth Day Coordinator) and Josh Collins (Oak Ridge Parks and Recreation Director) were present at the event. See Greg Weaver's photos .
Barry Thacker
provided links from the Oak Ridger newspaper that show the mayor of Oak
Ridge, TN planting chestnut trees in Bissel Park as part of the The chestnut exhibit was a popular attraction at the Science Expo held at Volunteer State Community College, Gallatin, TN (April 2, 2009). To see a March 27, 2009 article in The Knoxville News Sentinel about volunteers planting American chestnut on abandoned coal mine land on the Cumberland Plateau, click here. To see photos taken at TACF's southern regional meeting in Chattanooga on March 7, 2009, as well as the agenda click here.
Check out this
website where chestnut memories are recorded: The TN Chapter had its winter meeting on Feb. 21, 2009 at Bridgestone-Warren County. To see photos of the events, click here . To see the Power Point presentations and the meeting announcement. click here. The Clinton Courier News published an article on the chestnut nursery set up at Briceville School at: http://www.coalcreekaml.com/newsCour022209.htm Middle school classes are asked to develop biogradable pots and an indoor nursery for growing American chestnut seedlings for restoration on abandoned coal mine sites in eastern Tennessee click here. Clint Neel finds another father tree in South Cumberland State Park (Nov., 2008); click to see photos A Power Point presentation, Mapping the American Chestnut at Mammoth Cave National Park, was presented at the annual Tennessee Academy of Science meeting in Nashville, TN (Nov. 21, 2008). Click here to view the presentation. Images of the 25th Anniversary meeting of The American Chestnut Foundation held in Chattanooga, TN (Oct. 24-26, 2008) The Tennessee Chapter of The American Chestnut Foundation will have an exhibit at the Music and Molasses Arts and Crafts Festival at the Ellington Agricultural Center in Nashville, October 18-19, 2008. Here is the flyer. New fruiting American chestnut trees are found in Claiborne and Sumner Counties, TN in Sept. and Oct., 2008. See the photos here.
TN TACF members hiked a
chestnut-rich trail in the Smoky Mountains.
Dr. Hill Craddock, Martin Cipollini, Don Davis
and Bethany Baxter represented The Photos of chestnut pollination work (2008) TN-TACF members will have a chestnut exhibit at the Conservation Biology meeting which will be held at the Chattanooga Convention Center. The meeting runs from Sunday, July 13 to Thursday, July 17. According to Dr. Hill Craddock at U. T./Chattanooga, the Society for Conservation Biology’s Annual Meeting is recognized as the most important global meeting for conservation professionals and students. SCB is an international professional organization dedicated to advancing the science and practice of conserving the Earth’s biological diversity. The Society is a global community with more than 12,000 members world-wide and comprises a wide range of people interested in the conservation and study of biological diversity: resource managers, educators, government and private conservation workers, and students. To participate, or for more information about the 2008 SCB meeting and TN-TACF's exhibit, please visit the SCB web pages at www.conbio.org The TN Chapter's annual summer meeting will be hosted by Ed Yost at Ijams Nature Center in Knoxville on Aug. 23, 2008. More details will be provided later. These meetings are always informative and a lot of fun. To learn more about the Ijam's Nature center, visit http://www.ijams.org/ TN-TACF officers, Greg Weaver, Clint Neel, and Sean Fisher set up a chestnut display providing information on the American chestnut at the Earth Day festivals in Oak Ridge (April 12) and Nashville (April 19). Click here On April 22, 2008, chestnut seedlings were planted on the campus of Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville, TN to celebrate Earth Day. The following link has photos and summarizes the events. http://www.trevecca.edu/info/newsandevents?id=3171 A fine article by the UT Daily Beacon (Apr. 14, 2008) on restoration of American chestnut trees on abandoned coal mines in the Appalachians: http://dailybeacon.utk.edu/showarticle.php?articleid=53389 Carol Moore constructed an interesting webpage on the planting of American chestnut trees by Elk Valley 7th and 8th graders as an Arbor Day celebration; they were planted on National Coal's mining site on Zeb Mountain (Apr. 7, 2008)-- click on: http://www.coalcreekaml.com/ElkValleyArborDay2008.htm
More press coverage of the Zeb Mountain chestnut
planting and the potential for future restoration of the American
chestnut on abandoned coal mine lands: Joe Schibig provided a Community College Day exhibit on the American chestnut during Legislative Day at the Legislative Plaza in Nashville on March 19, 2008, and on April 3, 2008 he and four of his students set up a chestnut display at the Science Expo held at Volunteer State Community College in Gallatin, TN. The following Power Point presentation was shown at these events: Chestnut trees and chestnut people
TN-TACF will have a booth at the Oak Ridge
Earth Day festival on April 12, and the Nashville Earth Day festival on
April 19. Come see us on Earth Day. Here is a link to info about
the Oak Ridge event:
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/020108/com_242806233.shtml
The March 14 chestnut planting on Zeb Mountain makes the news. Click link below: http://www.coalcreekaml.com/ChestnutZeb.htm
To see a Mar. 10, 2008 article in the Knoxville
News-Sentinel about the reforestation of strip mined land with chestnut
and other hardwoods on Zeb Mountain in Campbell Co., TN.
click
here
A nice American
chestnut is discovered by hikers in the Smokey Mountains.
On March 14, 2008,
The
Coal Creek
Watershed Foundation
(CCWF),
the
Appalachian Regional
Reforestation Initiative
(ARRI)
and
The American
Chestnut Foundation
(TACF) are
partnering in the planting of
hundreds of American chestnut seed on National Coal Corporations's
reclaimed mine sites in Campbell County. For more information go
to: "On a mission to save the chestnut tree" Community College Times, Jan. 18, 2008
To see activities before 2008, click on
Meetings Order TN-TACF T-Shirts with the new logo.
The Tennessee Chapter of The American Foundation, Inc., is a non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation dedicated to the restoration of the American chestnut tree to the forests and woodlots of Tennessee.
Chestnut breeding in Tennessee has been greatly aided by support from the National Forest Foundation. The National Forest Foundation, chartered by Congress, engages America in community-based and national programs that promote the health and public enjoyment of the 192 million-acre National Forest System, and accepts and administers private gifts of funds and land for the benefit of the National Forests.
President of the TN Chapter: Greg Weaver
weaverpond@aol.com DEDICATED TO THE RESTORATION OF THE AMERICAN CHESTNUT |
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