Past president TACF-ME Al Faust examines chestnut seedling at TACF’s 40th anniversary party last fall.
Ellsworth’s Arbor Commission to Host Arbor Day Event
Arbor Day 2024 is on April 26, and at 7:00PM at the Moore Community Center (125 State Street) that evening the City of Ellsworth’s new Arbor Commission will be celebrating its first Arbor Day by hosting a program offered by the Maine Chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation.
The event will feature a new award-winning documentary produced by The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF): Clear Day Thunder: Rescuing the American Chestnut. The film documents the history of the American Chestnut, its obliteration by chestnut blight, and its road to restoration. The film explains why the chestnut was so essential to the social, economic, and ecological fabric of forest communities from Georgia to Maine. It also examines why so many people have invested so much time and money to return this iconic tree to its native range. Their stories bear witness to how the love of a tree can drive people to secure its future. The film’s runtime is 52 minutes.
Mark McCollough, President of the Maine Chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation, will introduce the award-winning documentary Clear Day Thunder and answer questions afterward. Mr. McCollough grew up with American chestnuts in western Pennsylvania and remembers playing on the chestnut split rail fences around the family farm in the 1960s. For the last 40 years, he was an endangered species biologist for state and federal wildlife agencies in Maine. He recently retired from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He is also a wildlife artist and responsible for the loon and chickadee featured on Maine license plates.
Thanks to the American Chestnut Foundation, last Fall, volunteers planted out 30 American Chestnuts at the Community Tree Nursery managed by Green Ellsworth, Frenchman Bay Conservancy and the Ellsworth Garden Club, and these and additional trees will be planted in permanent locations in the City beginning this year. Students at the Ellsworth Elementary Middle School are participating in a chestnut seed project and will participate in planting out American Chestnuts during Maine Arbor Week in May. While the Foundation and its partners work to develop a blight resistant chestnut suitable for forest restoration, its Maine Chapter continues preserving the genetic diversity found in Maine’s surviving wild chestnuts. Maine has more surviving wild chestnuts than any other state in its range. This all-volunteer organization tends chestnut orchards, maps wild trees, plants and harvests nuts, and stewards trees to preserve their genes for future restoration.
This Arbor Day event will offer displays by both the American Chestnut Foundation and the Arbor Commission so that people can get involved and contribute towards Ellsworth’s re-treeing efforts. For more information about the film, Clear Day Thunder, watch a trailer here. The American Chestnut Foundation website can be found at www.tacf.org. For more information about the City of Ellsworth’s Arbor Commission, its mission to rebuild and maintain the City’s canopy and its emerging team of Community Tree Stewards, citizens are encouraged to attend the monthly meetings of the Arbor Commission (first Monday of the month at 8:15AM, City Hall Council Chambers) or contact Commission Chair Tabatha White at arborcommission@ellsworthmaine.gov.
