The Bronx Zoo is Bringing Back a Tree That Almost Vanished From America

The Bronx Zoo is bringing back a long-lost tree to the park. Twenty-five hybrid American chestnut trees are being planted there this fall.

The Wildlife Conservation Society announced the planting on September 30. The trees are a gift from the New York Restoration Project in partnership with The American Chestnut Foundation.

Bronx Zoo Chief Forester Hermann Merkel first documented chestnut blight at the zoo in 1904.

The disease later killed nearly 4 billion American chestnut trees. WCS says the species is now considered functionally extinct in the wild.

The blight was first documented at the Bronx Zoo

Embedded media follows. Please allow a moment for it to load.

American chestnuts were once common across forests in the eastern United States. The trees provided food and habitat for wildlife. People also used the wood for timber.

That changed after chestnut blight began spreading through the tree’s native range. WCS says it eventually affected forests from Maine to Florida and from the Ohio Valley westward.

The U.S. Forest Service also traces the disease’s discovery to the Bronx Zoological Park in 1904. By the middle of the century, the chestnut had largely disappeared as a canopy tree.

These trees were bred to resist the disease

The trees being planted at the Bronx Zoo are hybrids bred for blight resistance. They are part of a much larger effort to get American chestnuts growing again in places where they once lived.

Functionally extinct does not mean every American chestnut is gone. New York Restoration Project says sprouts can still grow from old root systems, but they usually develop blight and die back again.

More than 200 are already growing in Manhattan

New York Restoration Project and its partners have been planting hybrid American chestnuts in Highbridge Park since 2017. WCS says more than 200 have been planted and cared for there. The site is now New York City’s largest chestnut grove.

NYRP started its 1,000 Chestnut Challenge in 2025. The goal is to eventually have 1,000 American chestnuts growing across New York City’s five boroughs.