New England Regional Breeding Program
New England Regional Breeding Program
Yale University
Greeley Lab ~ 370 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT 06511
203-598-5808 (cell)
Contact Leila
Leila Pinchot joined the TACF Staff in May 2006 as the New England Regional Science Coordinator, thanks to funding from the Pew Charitable Trusts. Leila coordinates orchards in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, and other New England states, working closely with a potential Vermont chapter and a Vermont orchard at Shelburne Farms (the site of TACF’s 2007 annual meeting).
"In high school my father told my sister and me about the American chestnut and the blight and showed us some sprouts
growing in Pennsylvania. As many people are, I was drawn to the chestnut story. At Oberlin College,
where I majored in biology, I wrote several term papers on chestnut and, during January break Senior year, I volunteered for Dr. Anagnostakis at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. The month-long internship turned into a summer job, where I learned how to grow, pollinate, and inoculate chestnut trees; how to grow chestnut blight; and how to convert blight fungus with hypovirulence. After working with Dr. Anagnostakis, I helped establish an American chestnut orchard at the Milford Experimental Forest in Pennsylvania."
Leila is currently completing a graduate program at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Leila will pursue a PhD program at University of Tennessee, working with Scott Schlarbaum and Dr. Stacy Clark (of the USFS Southern Research Station), she will make the shift from Yale to Knoxville in early-mid August.
She will be greatly missed!
Kendra Gurney
Northern Research Station
Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture
705 Spear Street
South Burlington, VT 05403
Tel: 802-951-6771 x-1440 ~ Fax 802-951-6368
Contact Kendra
Kendra Gurney joined the staff in May 2008, as the New England Science Coordinator. Kendra will replace Leila Pinchot in August, when Leila leaves to pursue her PhD at the University of Tennessee. Kendra will work with Leila to transition the Coordinator's position from Yale University to the University of Vermont.
Kendra grew up on the NH seacoast and spent summers camping in NH’s White Mountains. She earned a BS in Environmental Conservation: Science with a self-designed minor in plant and forest health at the University of New Hampshire. While at UNH, she worked as an intern for NH Department of Environmental Services’ (NHDES) Volunteer Lake Assessment Program (VLAP), where she had her first taste of outreach work: "I traveled around NH, sampled lakes with volunteers and had a blast".
Kendra just completed a MS in Natural Resources with a forestry concentration at the University of Vermont. American chestnut restoration was the topic of her research, which got her involved with TACF and the formation of the VT/NH chapter.
American chestnut background:
I had my first introduction to American chestnut in my freshman Dendrology course at UNH. We read about chestnut logs that had fallen decades ago creating “mazes” of downed material in the Smokey Mountains. I have always had a soft spot for “big trees” and this image really caught my attention. The author described logs from trees that were once 6 to 8 feet in diameter, still taller than a man while lying dead on the ground. I wished I could have seen them standing upright! I encountered the tree again in later courses, and even had the opportunity to read through original USDA reports from Haven Metcalf that one of my professors had acquired. When I decided to pursue a MS degree at UVM’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, the research group I joined had not begun researching American chestnut restoration. A few months into my program my advisor began working with Marshal, and I was thrilled when soon after a collaborative project was offered to me. I spent the next two and a half years conducting an inventory of existing American chestnut in VT, conducting controlled pollinations, and researching the cold tolerance of American and backcross chestnut in relation to native competitors in the colder reaches of chestnut’s range. I’m excited to further my work with American chestnut by joining the TACF team!