Imagine a future in which your grandkids have never seen an acorn.

That sounds ridiculous, but it’s close to the experience our grandparents have with the Ozark Chinquapin. In one lifetime, this tree went from being so abundant people used shovels to gather chinquapin nuts off the ground to being so rare they’re nearly unheard of.

Ozarkers have helped pull other species back from the edge of extinction—like the black bear and turkey. So saving the Chinquapin could be the great conservation story of our generation.

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Let's get into it.

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Call it Ozark stubbornness, but the Chinquapin isn't going down without a fight.

When the blight arrived in the 1950s, the trees didn't die cleanly. They stump-sprout, come back, get hit again, and die in a loop that's been running for about 70 years now. Technically they're not dead. But they never grow old enough to reproduce.

That's what it means to be functionally extinct.

The only reason the Chinquapin is still here is that the root systems have enough stored nutrition to keep the cycle going. That loop will continue until that nutrition runs out.

Unless people intervene.

This isn't the first time our region has seen a species on the brink. By the early 1930s, wild turkey populations had dropped nationwide from an estimated 10 million to roughly 30,000. By the 1940s, there were fewer than 50 black bears estimated in the entire state of Arkansas.

So what brought them back?

People weren't willing to let them die.

I got to go turkey hunting with some of my best friends two weekends ago because the generation before us worked to keep them from disappearing. I owe that experience to Ozarkers who came before me.

Researchers have spent years identifying wild Chinquapins that show natural resistance to the blight.

The strategy isn't complicated: find the strongest survivors, cross-pollinate to maximize that resistance, grow the resulting seed in protected orchards, and get it into the ground on as many properties as possible.

The Ozark Chinquapin Foundation has been doing exactly that for close to 20 years.

They run orchards, conduct research, and send seeds to members every winter. In their own orchards, trees are starting to reproduce naturally. AJ shared that crows and blue jays are carrying seeds up to five miles out, and natural reproduction is showing up in places they didn't plant.

It’s a slow process, but it’s showing signs of working.

I'm amazed by people like AJ Hendershott and organizations like the OCF who see the value in doing work they won't live to see finished. Most people don't think that way, but future generations will be glad they did.

The more people who get involved, the better chance the Chinquapin has of making a comeback.

Let’s do the things today that conservationists tell stories about 80 years from now.