A Rare Chestnut Grove Could Be Bulldozed for an AI Data Center

The American chestnut was once one of the most dominant trees in the eastern United States — an estimated 4 billion trees stretching from Maine to Georgia, providing food and timber for generations of people and wildlife. Then a blight arrived from Asia in the early 1900s and killed nearly all of them within decades. The American chestnut went from ubiquitous to functionally extinct in the wild within a single human lifetime.

Which is why what’s happening in Mason County, West Virginia right now matters well beyond a dispute over a patch of trees.

What’s There and Why It’s Irreplaceable

At the former Clements State Tree Nursery in West Columbia, there is a grove of approximately 200 American chestnut trees — reportedly planted in the 1970s from wild survivors of the blight, trees that managed to carry some resistance to it. Over the past 50 years, those trees have grown into what conservationists describe as critical restoration infrastructure. The American Chestnut Foundation’s West Virginia chapter has identified the grove as a primary source of nuts used to grow seedlings for state and local restoration programs. Losing the trees wouldn’t just mean losing 200 specimens. It would mean losing the genetic source material that much of the region’s chestnut restoration work depends on.

Environmental advocacy group Global Justice Ecology Project issued an urgent action alert warning that the grove could be cleared as early as November 1, 2026.