On this episode of America' Forests with me, Chuck Leavell, we're in Georgia.

Can I join in the party here?

Of course.

Everywhere you turn, people here are doing their part to make the forests healthy.

From planting trees to bringing back the iconic American chestnut.

We're going to do it, aren't we?

Absolutely we're going to do it.

And where the forests are healthy, so are snakes, fish, and of course, people.

All that and more next on America's Forests.

Hi, I'm Chuck Leavell.

In addition to my beautiful family, there are two things that I have a very special interest in and passion for, music and trees.

My wife, Rose Lane, and I own and manage our own forest land, Charlane Woodlands, right here in Georgia.

And we grow southern yellow pine as well as some other species.

Now, as a musician getting to play and travel with the Rolling Stones, the Allman Brothers Band, Eric Clapton, and others, I get to meet folks out there that also have a passion for trees and forests.

And now I get to share their stories with you.

So join me as we journey through America's forests.

[music playing] This is a story of a fish that saved a forest.

In recent years, conservationists have come to realize that wildlife needs more than just a pocket here and a pocket there to survive.

They need unbroken stretches of forests like this one, the Dugdown corridor.

The Dugdown is a national model for conservation, stitching together private and publicly owned land.

It stretches 30 miles, embracing 100,000 acres from Atlanta's western suburbs to Alabama's Talladega National Forest.

The Dugdown story begins here in a tiny creek deep in the woods.

Katie, I guess we're going to suit up here.

All right.

Got the waders.

Got to get these boots on.

Oh, look, I got new boots.

Katie Owens of the Nature Conservancy monitors the health of the creek by rustling up fish.

So we're going to go in, actually, right about this rock, and one of us will go to the far side, and one of us will stay closer in front of Allison.

And then we're going to do our darter shuffle all the way to where the seine begins.

All right.

You show me how to shuffle.

I will show you how to shuffle.

[splashing] That's a good catch, huh?

Yeah.

Katie, what we got here?

So this is a bronze darter.

It's one of our largest bodied darters in this area, and definitely a key species for Raccoon Creek.

And then this is the federally endangered Etowah darter.

So this is the $90 million fish.

That's correct.

So both of these fish really are two key fish in the Raccoon Creek Watershed.

And these are the fish that really started the larger conservation project surrounding Raccoon Creek, which has ballooned into the larger Dugdown Corridor.

The project to create the corridor started in 1989 with a small tract of land, and it's been growing steadily ever since.

This part of the country is remarkable for its biodiversity.

Keeping the forest healthy keeps other species healthy too.

Healthy enough to kiss.

So there's a tradition here at Raccoon Creek, and that is if you get an Alabama hog sucker fish, it's good luck if you kiss it.

I'm from Alabama, so I'm going to kiss this fish.

Good luck, baby.

Some of the species being protected here are hard to find, like this rare pine snake.

I wanted to see one for myself, so I tagged along with an expert tracker, Aurora Setias.

Now, Aurora, I've never tracked a snake before.

OK, this is new for me.

So you're going to have to tell me how we do this.

So what we do first is we collect the snake, and then we implant this transmitter surgically into the snake.

It's a really quick procedure.

It doesn't hurt the snake at all.

And then we release the snake, and we immediately begin tracking it practically daily.

So this is a pine snake, is that correct?

Yes.

And they're pretty rare, right?

Yeah, they're very rare.

And their habitat has been both fragmented and then very reduced in size.

OK, well, let's go see if we can find that rascal.

Let's do it.

You lead the way.

Hear that?

Yeah, that's clicking now.

The Dugdown Corridor is a prime example of the new approach in wildlife conservation that looks at whole habitats, not just individual species.

Well, it's really important that we have these corridors.

We are experiencing extreme climate throughout the South.

And having a location like this that is expansive and wide gives our critters, it gives them the appropriate habitat.

Nature, if we allow it, will do what it needs to do, and that is to protect people and species.

It's getting stronger, Aurora.

Yeah, it is.

All right.

We must be closing in.

Not only are we searching for a rare pine snake, we're searching in a rare pine forest.

This is called the Montane Longleaf Pine ecosystem, and it's found only in North Alabama and Northwest Georgia.

Oh my gosh, I actually see her.

Oh, yeah.

This is very typical refuge for pine snake.

You see this hollowed out longleaf pine stump.

Let's see if we can get her out.

Pine snakes spend most of their time underground using their snouts like a shovel to create long burrows.

Wow.

Can I hold her?

Of course.

And it's really a privilege to see one.

Shes gorgeous.

She wants to go back.

Yeah.

Why'd you make me get out of my nice, comfy home?

All right.

Shall we put her back where she belongs?

Yeah, let's do that.

There's an ongoing effort to bring even more land into the corridor.

Plans are underway to purchase 10,000 acres across the state line in Alabama that would make a direct link to the Talladega National Forest.

Jonathan, here we are in my home state of Alabama at the highest point in the entire state.

Yes, sir.

We're in the middle of the Talladega National Forest, which is 235,000 acres of public land that's here that touches the Dugdown Corridor that leads us all the way to the Metropolitan Atlanta area.

And as that corridor goes, so goes all sorts of species of wildlife and all sorts of ecology, but it also benefits the public, 9 million people that live around this forest, and they can recreate here.

You can't have this kind of conservation without teamwork.

It takes state, federal, non-governmental organizations, private landowners all working together with a vision to maintain and to build a corridor like this.

The idea of a corridor is inspired by the philosophy of one of my conservation heroes, Aldo Leopold.

As he puts it, “the land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals.” And that's exactly what a conservation corridor does.

It enlarges the boundaries to embrace all life.

[music playing] The forests of North Georgia in fall are a sight to behold, especially on horseback.

Now, I've come to Berry College, one of the country's most beautiful campuses, blessed with 27,000 acres of woodlands.

I'm here to learn about the advances made by my good friend and superb scientist, Marty Cipollini, in saving a tree that we both love, the American chestnut.

So how many trees total do you have in this orchard here, Marty?

Well, you know, we originally started with 300 trees.

Wow.

This tree actually is number 297.

It's one of my favorite trees.

Once upon a time, American chestnuts were the royalty of the Eastern forest.

Some towered more than 100 feet tall, and their numbers tallied nearly 4 billion.

But in the late 1800s, the chestnut was hit with a double whammy, root rot and blight.

Soon they were almost extinct.

That's where Marty's orchard and others come in.

Scientists across the country are conducting rigorous research to develop disease resistant trees.

They are crossbreeding Chinese chestnuts with American chestnuts.

Most hybrids are 1/16 Chinese and 15/16 American.

Now, all these trees are genetically tested.

So the breeding program that we're working with now is highly assisted by genomics.

We have the current program is sometimes called the “Best By Best” program.

So this is a best tree.

And we have pollinated with other best pollens and harvested the nuts.

My pal Marty is letting me harvest some of his successful chestnuts to take home to my own tree farm.

These are pollination bags.

Back in June, we put these bags on the immature burrs, took them off a couple of weeks later, and put the pollen that we wanted on this tree, put the bags back on.

And now here we are.

It's harvest time.

The harvest is the simplest part.

The hard part is getting up here.

But all we're going to do here is just cut these bags down.

We'll gather them up.

We'll shuck the burrs, we'll extract the seeds, and we'll count the success of the pollination event that we did here.

That's good.

All right, Chuck, well, we're going to open up some of these bags and see what we got.

Well, look at that.

We got some nuts.

Oh, yeah.

Look, that's four or five right there.

Yeah.

And the trees that we have available for you, they're the offspring of very good trees.

They're a product of the “Best By Best” program.

So we're hoping they're going to do great at your place.

I hope so too.

Marty isn't the only one trying to bring back chestnuts.

That passion is shared by many across the United States, including noted Georgia radiologist, Dr.

Austin Flint.

So, Dr.

Flint, this is your orchard that you have had since when?

Since about 2018, Chuck.

We got started into the program trying to bring this wonderful tree back.

How did you get an interest in, of all things, chestnut trees?

Well, I grew up, Chuck, hearing my father talk about the American chestnut tree.

He was born in Mount Airy, Georgia in 1888, and he knew the tree when it was in its full glory.

Oh, wow.

So he used to talk about it a lot.

And I was born in 1937.

But by 1940, the trees were all gone.

Gone, terrible loss.

Terrible loss.

Such a great American icon of a tree.

Now we're trying to bring this thing back.

We're going to do it, aren't we?

Absolutely we're going to do it.

Dr.

Flint has enlisted researchers from nearby Reinhardt University to assist in his experimental orchard.

Kylie Stover is a biology instructor and the orchard manager.

Vinny Varsalona is a graduate student researcher helping with inoculation.

When we're inoculating something, we're introducing more or less a disease, right?

Yes, sir.

That's correct.

Show us how that works.

All right.

First thing we have is chestnut blight fungus.

Is it radioactive, man?

No, it's not radioactive or anything like that.

And we pick our spot on the tree and we come in taking this punch, push it in, and just twist it until you stop hearing the crackling sound.

So basically, you're just barely getting into the bark into the cambium, right?

Yes, sir, that's right.

I kind of feel bad for this tree, Vinny.

Yeah, in some ways, I feel bad for it too.

But it's doing its job.

It's all for good purpose, right?

That's right.

And about how long does it take for you to know whether the inoculation is going to affect the tree?

So you can see in a couple of weeks whether or not the inoculation has taken.

You'll start to see the tissue around the site where we inoculated die.

And after about a month or so, you'll be able to tell whether or not you think that the tree is really going to survive and move on to another round of inoculations.

The inoculations that we're doing, the first round is a weak round, and the trees that survive that one move on to an intermediate round.

And then the final stage is kind of like the nuclear bomb of chestnut blight.

Very few trees actually survive that one.

But the ones that do, we're pretty certain, will be able to be planted out.

It's quite a process.

When I look into the future, I see that my children and my grandchildren will be able to walk into our forests in North Georgia and be able to see the American chestnut flourish.

It's a dream that I share as well.

A future where American chestnuts tower once again in America's forests.

Atlanta is known as the city in a forest.

More than half the metro area is covered in trees, and the benefits of urban forests to people are countless.

Clean air, clean water, shade from heat waves, and a sanctuary from the stresses of life.

The jewel in Atlanta's crown is the beltline.

It's a former railroad corridor that is now a green belt, a 22 mile loop connecting 45 neighborhoods.

People flock here daily to run, to bike, or just stroll.

The people of Atlanta are proud of their trees, and nowhere is that more evident than here at Fernbank Forest.

Wow, Heather, this is just beautiful.

Absolutely gorgeous.

Tell me about the history of this place.

We are currently in Fernbank Forest, which is a 65 acre old growth forest in the middle of Atlanta.

Fernbank Inc was created in 1939 by the family who owned the property previously, and some of the other people they knew to protect this forest as a school in the woods.

This is our pond, and it is my personal favorite spot on our entire campus.

It's an amazing place, because even if you're having a bad day, when you come out and you're walking around in the forest, it's just calming and peaceful.

The deer use it.

The coyotes.

We have water snakes we see down here periodically and birds galore.

And how amazing that we're right in the middle of a major city in the United States here in Atlanta.

Nature gets a helping hand at Fernbank.

More than 400 volunteers contribute their time and their muscle to keeping this forest healthy.

And I'm going to chip in to haul out some nasty invasive species.

Heather, looks like you've already got some folks hard at work here.

These are invasive species we're talking about here.

Yeah, so we have a whole mix of invasives out here.

Sydney and Brittany are working on some of the liriope, also known as monkey grass.

It is a very popular plant in landscaping, used for borders all the time.

It spreads all over, has really matted roots, so nothing can come through.

John is over here pulling out nandina, which will also keep spreading.

Sally is over there working on some English Ivy, and Licia is over here doing what you're about to do, using the Puller Bear, to pull out a cherry laurel.

Polar bears in Georgia.

I never thought I'd see such a thing.

Pulling not polar.

Oh, OK.

Pulling bear.

OK.

All right.

We're going to go right over here to this little Chinese holly.

You're going to open your jaws, put them around.

Yep.

Put that foot on the front to help hold it.

Once you feel the pressure, then you move your foot, and you should be able to pull it right out.

We may need to adjust once or twice, but yeah.

Are you ready?

One, two, three, let's go.

Perfect.

Well done.

Yay.

I'm getting good at this, Heather.

I know.

And you got a liriope too, so excellent work.

All right, Heather, what have we got here?

So this is another cherry laurel.

This one is a little bit bigger.

The tool will do it.

Sometimes you just have to give it a little more oomph than the smaller ones we did.

All right.

Here we go.

See, you can hear the roots ripping out.

See if we can just use good old muscle here.

There we go.

There you go.

And you thought that would be difficult.

Well, it wasn't all that easy.

[laughs] Well, that felt good.

But my service to Atlanta's forests isn't over yet.

After getting rid of unwanted trees, it's time to fill in the gaps with native species.

This weekend is Plantlanta.

This is our biggest planting event all year.

We're planting about 60 trees in this neighborhood today.

[applause] So thank you all so much for giving your time on this beautiful Saturday morning to make our city a greener, healthier, more beautiful place.

Plantlanta is an annual event that brings out hundreds of volunteers to plant trees across the city in just one weekend.

It's part of the 10,000 volunteers who help Trees Atlanta all year long.

Not just planting, but caring for trees in city neighborhoods and parks.

Our main goal, of course, is to increase canopy and trees within the city, but also we've really tailored our outreach methods to engaging with the community throughout the entire process.

Every single one of our projects has some person from the neighborhood involved, and I always like to say that we're not throwing volunteer events to plant trees.

We're throwing planting parties.

Trees Atlanta!

So really getting people out here excited about what's happening and then also excited to keep the trees living their long, best life out here.

The concept is we want the hole to be twice the size as the tree in the container.

I met up with Rebecca Gilbert, education director for Trees Atlanta.

We're in this historic Westview neighborhood planting.

And by planting these trees on the street side, we are helping these neighbors out.

We're going to help mitigate a lot of stormwater runoff.

We're going to help with collecting air pollution from these streets.

Noise cancellation.

These homeowners are going to have a quieter life experience.

And especially important is the heat island effect of cities.

Correct.

So a big problem in our city and cities across the world is going to be this heat island effect, and it's only going to increase in the future.

And what's happening in our very built urban environments, we've taken away nature, right?

And by having a lot of concrete and by having these buildings made of metal, it's really just absorbing all of the heat from above, and then it radiates back out overnight.

So you never have that cycle that we have in nature of temperature change over the day.

Well, when you consider that Atlanta has, well, the metro area has almost 7 million inhabitants, I mean, that's a lot of population.

That's a lot of homes.

That's a lot of buildings.

That's a lot of heat.

Right.

Getting in there and putting in that green infrastructure, we're helping to fix these problems through nature.

I love it.

Let's go plant some trees.

Now it's time for me to make my own contribution.

I'm joining a team of volunteers from Southern Company Gas.

Can I join in the party?

Of course.

I don't want y'all to do all the work.

I mean.

We welcome the help.

We need just a little wider.

Is that what I heard?

More and more businesses across Georgia and the nation are stepping up to support conservation initiatives.

After all, it takes healthy communities to have a healthy economy.

How many trees do you think you've planted in your lifetime?

Oh, lord of mercy.

Probably more than you can count.

More than I can count, but probably in the hundreds or thousands, I would think.

Mostly seedlings like this, rather than big trees, but a few like this.

It's a good feeling, isn't it?

It is, it is.

I love planting trees.

They're reminders that change takes time.

Yep.

And they're powerful symbols of our commitments to future generations and their sustainability futures.

That's right.

Good for the soul.

They're good for the soul.

Yes.

All right.

Low to high.

Here we go.

Yeah, all right.

[laughs] Great one, guys.

Thank you all so much.

Thank you.

Trees Atlanta describes Plantlanta as one big old party.

And what's a party without some music?

This has been an extraordinary day.

Thank you all so much.

I want to thank all my friends from Trees Atlanta, all my friends from Southern Company Gas for participating in the great Plantlanta event.

We did some good today, people.

Give it up!

[cheering] To celebrate the event, I'd like to do this for you.

[music playing] (SINGING) Georgia Oh, Georgia The whole day through Just an old sweet song Keeps Georgia on my mind Georgia Yeah, Georgia Just a song of you Comes as sweet and clear As moonlight through the pines Well, when other arms reach out to me, and other eyes smile tenderly, still in peaceful dreams I guess I'll see.

Well, I see the road It leads right back to you Hey, Georgia My sweet, sweet Georgia Oh, no peace I find It's just an old sweet song But it keeps Georgia Yes, keeps Georgia rolling Rolling on my mind Uh-huh, well [cheering] Thank you.

Thank you all so much.

[music playing]