The American chestnut (Castanea dentata) was rendered functionally extinct by the introduction of the chestnut blight fungus (Cryphonectria parasitica (Murr.) Barr.) early last century. Over the last 40 years, ecologist, geneticists, plant pathologists, molecular biologist along with citizen scientists and volunteers have been working to remedy this problem. The restoration of American chestnut to its previous role as a canopy dominant tree is important for ecological, economic and aesthetic reasons. As an ecological foundation species it reportedly accounted for 50% or more of the basal area in some forest stands and likely affected population, community and ecosystem processes. The American Chestnut Foundation has created hybrid trees that are blight resistant like Chinese chestnut and morphologically similar to the American chestnut. Tens of thousands of these third generation backcross hybrids (BC3F3) are currently growing in dozens of orchards throughout the chestnut’s historical range. Recently, a significant reduction in the blight’s detrimental effects on seedlings was achieved by inserting a single gene from wheat into chestnut. Ultimately, successful restoration will likely be achieved by combining both hybrid and transgenic approaches. Chestnut restoration efforts aim to introduce millions of blight resistant trees back into eastern deciduous forests. Is it inevitable that there will be pushback, justified or not, about the introduction of genetically modified chestnuts into eastern forests?. In this session we briefly summarize this program and then we invite session attendees to weigh in with their expertise, ideas, thoughts and opinions regarding this critical issue in American chestnut and beyond.