E360 DIGEST, YALE ENVIRONMENT 360, DECEMBER 27, 2018.
A team of arborists has successfully cloned and grown saplings from the stumps of some of the world’s oldest and largest coast redwoods, some of which were 3,000 years old and measured 35 feet in diameter when they were cut down in the 19th and 20th centuries. Earlier this month, 75 of the cloned saplings were planted at the Presidio national park in San Francisco.
The initiative is run by the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive, a nonprofit working to reestablish ancient redwood forests to help combat climate change. Coastal redwoods, which can grow an average 10 feet per year, sequester 250 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over their lives, compared to 1 ton for an average tree.
“We’re excited to set the standard for environmental recovery,” David Milarch, a fourth-generation arborist and co-founder of the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive, said in a statement. “These trees have the capacity to fight climate change and revitalize forests and our ecology in a way we haven’t seen before.”
