People who do historic restoration have been taking advantage of cloning technology. Historic trees are being cloned to help preserve and restore historic landscapes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports:
Transcript
People who do historic restoration have been taking advantage of
cloning technology. Historic trees are being cloned to help preserve and
restore historic landscapes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar
Charney reports:
Michigan’s Fort Mackinac is a military fortress from the American
Revolution. In the mid 1800’s, soldiers stationed there planted a row of eight
sugar maples lining the fort’s parade ground. But these trees are now old
and dying.
Phil Porter is a curator who’s worked at Fort Mackinac for over
30 years. He says he was sad and concerned that they would soon lose this
living link to the fort’s past. So he decided to have the trees cloned.
“We think that by cloning them, by going to that very high level of
reproducing what is there now we can do the most accurate job of
reproducing the environment, the right looking trees, and putting them
back in the same place.”
While the clones won’t look any different from a sugar maple seedling
bought at a nursery, keeping the genes of a historic tree alive through
cloning seems to appeal to people. There are tree cloning projects
underway in Massachusetts, Maryland, and even Australia to help replicate
historic trees people have a connection to.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamar Charney.