Hope for restoring American elms? Disease that decimated the trees could help bring them back
The very disease that has decimated millions of American elms in the U.S. is now being used to bring the iconic trees back.
In Vermont, Leila Wilson, a research ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service, is one of the scientists leading an effort to beat Dutch elm disease, which has killed tens of millions of elm trees over the last century. Scientists with the Forest Service and The Nature Conservancy Vermont spent the summer injecting 6,000 young elm trees with Dutch elm disease spores to test their resistance to the disease.
