Local Spotlight: Thomas Klak

Thomas Klak has has been involved with American Chestnut Tree restoration for 9 years. PHOTO BY MADDIE MCDONALD

Maddie McDonald, Intern•

Restoration in a (chest)nut shell

At one point in time, the American chestnut tree once reached 100 feet in height and occupied over 200 million acres of land in the eastern United States.

Its wood was valued as a great building material along with its other benefits such as the chestnuts themselves, and the major positive role it played in the environment. However the chestnut's demise began in the 1800’s when ink disease was introduced. This slowly killed off virtually all the chestnut trees in the southeastern US and the final blow happened in the early 20th century when chestnut blight spread through the eastern forests including Maine.

This is where University of New England (UNE) professor Thomas Klak comes into the spotlight. As an environmental educator with a PhD at the University of Wisconsin, an interest in restoration and a desire to help the earth, Klak has dedicated a huge chunk of his life to bringing the American chestnut tree back.

The revival of the great American Chestnut emerged as an environmental restoration project at UNE due to the chestnut tree being a keystone species. This means that this tree is a species that many others in the ecosystem largely depend on.

“If we bring this tree back it will have a lot of positive ramifications for the environment around us,” said Klak.

Although Klak has been involved with chestnut restoration for nine years, this is his seventh year of using this particular solution of restoring the chestnut through genetic engineering,

When asked how this program has changed since the beginning, Klak responded with, “We've accomplished things that no other lab has ever accomplished with the speed breeding, we can make mature trees in 2 years or less using male pollen and female flowers in our UNE lab, whereas in nature it could take 4-10 years (depending on the plant). We are vastly faster and we can trace the generations that we create which is important in the genetic engineering process.”

As author of this article and environmental student at UNE, I was involved in this project this previous Fall season. Working with the trees hands on, I got a glimpse of the dedication that Klak and his students have put towards this work.

Klak said that when in the lab, “to study our findings, we are currently doing multiple tests on the trees that have the genetically engineered gene (for blight tolerance). Sapling trees are tested by giving them a dose of fungal blight on their branches so at this stage (sapling) we can see the effect that the blight makes on the branches. This helps to determine how tolerant the grown tree could be.”

There has been no shortage of helping hands alongside Professor Klak, and he talks about how students have been, “crucial to the advancement of this project, I would say I have probably done 5% of all the work and all the progress comes from the students, typically more than a dozen students helping out each semester, it has been super collaborative and the students have been fundamental to the success of everything.”

Klak gave a special shoutout to UNE grad student Virginia May, who he said has been working with him for 5 years and shares the same dedication to these trees as he does.

Now even environmental scientists need a break every now and then. When he’s not in class or lab, you may find Klak invested in a good college football game. He also loves to travel, read and cook, his favorite dish to make being a good pasta dish (and is currently working on mastering ramen). He routinely walks at least 10,000 steps everyday and finds himself lucky to live in northern Saco where he can walk around in nature. If you’ve ever been in class with Professor Klak, you know that he even takes “walk breaks” during class, giving himself and students a chance to get their steps in.

Down the line, Klak would love to arrive at a firmer conclusion through testing the trees for blight tolerance and have them possess enough tolerance so that they can mature again in the environment and survive on their own. This would allow him to take a step back and let nature take over in the reproduction process.

If you’d like to learn more about UNE’s American chestnut restoration project or help out in some way, please contact Dr. Klak at tklak@une.edu.

Maddie McDonald is a student at University of New England.