The Chestnut Blight leaves the tree roots intact, so that the trees survive by resprouting. As a result, if you walk through older growth forests in Southern Ontario, such as Backus Woods, you will see small American Chestnut trees growing. But only trees with built-in resistance to the Blight survive past 5 metres (16 feet) tall. A few of these still remain, and a small group of dedicated scientists and naturalists are working to bring back the American Chestnut by breeding trees with better resistance and researching ways to naturally reduce the strength of the Blight (excerpt take from "The Recovery of the American Chestnut", a Grand River Conservation Authority Publication by Bruce Graham).

Sarnia Urban Wildlife Committee is helping with the effort to bring back the American Chestnut by planting hundreds of young trees every year in gardens and remnant wild spaces around Sarnia. SUWC buys bare root seedlings from Burford Tree Nursery outside of Brantford. We bring them to Sarnia and a grower at DeGroots pots them and keeps them for a year. We then sell them to the public for $10.00 a tree.