On Friday, July 17, in Cape Elizabeth, University of New England Professor of Environmental Studies Thomas Klak began to pollinate one of the state’s few surviving American chestnut trees with a blight-tolerant pollen speed-bred by Klak and his students. The pollen, which Klak is holding, contains an extra gene from wheat, allowing it to resist the fungal blight that killed 3 billion chestnut trees from Maine to Alabama. This was the first time this has been done in Maine. Courtesy photo/University of New England