Archangel has shipped 1,000 exact genetic duplicates of 50 of the largest and oldest champion coast redwood trees in the world to the Oregon coast. Timed to take advantage of the seasonal rainy season, this year’s expanded plantings will occur at numerous private and public property locations up and down the coast, including Ocean Mountain Ranch, site of the World’s First Planting of a Champion Redwood & Sequoia Forest located in the headwaters of the Port Orford Community Stewardship Area in Curry County, Oregon. These Champion Trees will assist in restoring the old growth forest on the southern Oregon coast.

This shipment would not have been possible without the Archangel supporters that contributed to our effort.

Over 200 individuals contributed in a crowdfunding effort on Indiegogo.com to finance the production, shipping, and planting of the trees. Thanks to the support of everyone that contributed to further Archangel’s efforts to preserve the genetics of the largest and oldest living organisms on Earth, and to assist in the migration of the species during coming climate changes.

Among the dozens of unique individual tree clones to be planted in Oregon will be a duplicate of the Fieldbrook coast redwood – a giant cut down over 100 years ago which measured 32.5 feet in trunk diameter and would surpass the General Sherman Sequoia as the largest tree on Earth.

The trees were propagated in a multi-step process. First, new growth was collected from the tops of the largest and oldest coast redwoods on the planet. This material was rushed back to the Archangel propagation facility in Copemish, MI, where it was rooted and grown to a substantial enough size (12 to 15′) to create the daughter trees – those with exact replicas of the mother trees in the wild. Next tiny clippings of the daughter trees were replicated in a process known as micro-propagation. The 1,000 resulting tiny trees, also duplicates of the mother trees, were planted in rooting medium and cared for with the proper exposure to daylight and humidity, until they were large enough to transplant. The soil from these 3-5′ tall trees were meticulously removed from their roots, packed in thirteen containers, each weighing in at 150 pounds, and shipped to Oregon to be planted in a new old-growth forest.

David Milarch and his life-long efforts to re-forest the world with his two sons, Jared and Jake, are the subject of a recent book by New York Times science writer Jim Robbins entitled The Man Who Planted Trees: Lost Groves, Champion Trees, and an Urgent Plan to Save the Planet. This book has documented Archangel’s mission to clone the champion trees of the world – the largest, the hardiest, the ones that have survived millennia and are the most resilient to climate change – and create a kind of Noah’s ark of tree genetics.

The mission of Archangel Ancient Tree Archive is to propagate the world’s most important old growth trees before they are gone, archive the genetics of ancient trees in living libraries around the world for the future, and reforest the Earth with the offspring of these trees to provide the myriad of beneficial ecosystem services essential for all life forms to thrive.

Thank you so much to all of our supporters to gave to the Big Trees. Big Impact fundraiser on Indiegogo! Our next step is to get these trees packed up and shipped out to their planting destinations in Oregon and Northern California. We simply cannot do this work without your support. THANK YOU!

Thank you to our contributors…