Cool project:

Test trees are planted on old strip mines

Seems to be a very good project.
Had a rice crop damaged by genetic experiments in adjacent fields. Precautions were not taken. Bayer is an enormous company with agricultural interests. A class action suit got me a check.
Hope to see chestnuts growing. Care should be taken.

That is fascinating.

I hope for long-term success for the chestnut restoration efforts. The diversity of our forests has been repeatedly diminished by various pests.

When I was a boy, we were still cutting down dead chestnut trees in pastures on our farm for firewood. I had some ash trees in the yard at my home that were lost a few years ago to the emerald ash borer. The hemlocks in the Appalachians have been devastated in some regions by the woolly adelgid. There are a whole host of insects and diseases that affect different species of trees.

When trees are attacked by invasive pests, they can't run away. For major pests, they can't survive, even though they try. The sprouts from the chestnut trees that died are witness to this unsuccessful struggle.

I appreciate the virtues of chestnut as a wood. I have a couple of pieces of very old furniture that are made of chestnut.

I also live in a region that saw wide-spread strip mining. Some places I personally know were stripped three times as larger and larger shovels and draglines allowed the removal of deeper and deeper layers of overburden. Originally, unreclaimed "highwalls" were left adjacent to pits filled with acid water. Later, restoration requirements had the land regraded to approximately its original contours and then planted, usually with tough, easy-growing grasses like crown vetch or birds-foot trefoil. To see those hills sprouting chestnut trees and other species that they harbored in centuries past would be almost miraculous.

Big Al