Back in January we covered the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive, a project dedicated to preserving the world’s old-growth trees by cloning them. This week, in celebration of Earth Day, the project released its archive to the world and began planting cloned trees in seven different countries – including the US. Both Oregon and California received new redwoods that may bring as much awe and wonder to new generations as the Giant Redwoods do today.
Over the past few years, the Archangel team has scrambled to save disappearing old-growth trees. But rather than trying to save the living forests, as other conservationists strive to do, they have cloned existing trees in order to preserve their DNA for future use. But cloning was only the first part of the journey.
The current challenge for the project is making sure that these new trees survive in the wild. Part of the strategy to ensuring this happens is to plant trees in numerous different locations. The new locations were chosen as having the ideal combination of temperature and rainfall, taking into account the climate changes brought on by global warming. This process is called migration, and like animals migrate to friendlier climates, the project has helped these trees migrate, too.
The planting is the culmination of four years of work and a $2 million dollar, which all started with a third-generation Michigan nurseryman named David Milarch. Milarch wanted to create an archive of the genetic material from these old growth trees in order to preserve them for future generations. With this recent planting, his vision has finally come full circle.
+ Archangel Ancient Tree Archive
via Huffington Post
