Replanting forests is an important way to fight climate change because trees absorb carbon dioxide — one of the gases that trap heat in the earth’s atmosphere. They use it to grow and then store the carbon for many years.
The Archangel Ancient Tree Archive, a small nonprofit in Copemish, Mich., thinks it has a way to boost efforts to fight climate change. The group collects the living DNA of some of the world’s oldest and largest trees. It believes including those trees’ offspring in replanted forests will provide many environmental benefits.
“Those champion trees are more drought resistant, they’re more fire resistant, they’re more disease resistant, they’re more pest resistant than our other trees across the planet,” says Joe Sandri, a member of the group’s Board of Directors. “And they’re much, much better in terms of the volume of carbon they can sequester and the volume of carbon they can transform into oxygen.”
The organization is the brainchild of third- generation tree farmer David Milarch and his sons Jared and Jake. When the group started, scientists didn’t think it was possible to propagate ancient trees. But the Milarchs developed a process that grafts high-growth DNA tissue found below the bark of a tree onto a cutting from the very top of the ancient tree, and it was successful. The group’s nursery now houses thousands of the cloned trees in various stages of development, and it has started to plant them.
The group is small. Its budget this year is roughly $1 million, which comes from individual donors, foundations, and planting projects. Ancient old-growth trees are being cut down around the world. Archangel’s goal is to collect multiple DNA samples from standout trees of the 100 ecologically most important species so scientists will be able to study them.
Trees benefit humans in many ways, Sandri explains. The willow tree, for example, was the original source of the forerunner of aspirin and can remove heavy metals from the soil.
“We don’t know what we’re doing when we take out a 2,000-year-old grove of trees,” he says. “And that’s happening right now.”
Here, Joe Sandri climbs an enormous sequoia tree in Tulare County, Calif., to collect cuttings and seeds.
