In the past decades, botanists have initiated efforts to revive the species, breeding disease-resistant hybrids that could hopefully repopulate depleted forests. The good news: The American chestnut has not gone extinct, and certainly not forgotten. The bad news: The pathogenic virus remains a threat, and has not been controlled. Within 50 years the fungus had infected and killed most of the American chestnut trees from Georgia to Maine, depleting the forests of Appalachia. American chestnut populations were exposed to the disease around 1904, with the introduction of several Chinese chestnut trees that carried the blight-a virus that survives in the tree's roots and prevents the tree from maturing.
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