The warehouse that Archangel Ancient Tree Archive (AATA) calls home is unassuming, a green and white affair nestled in the small village of Copemish in Manistee County. The town’s name means “big beech,” and in that sense, it’s a perfect place for a nonprofit like AATA, a nonprofit with a mission to fight climate change by rebuilding the old-growth forests of the world.

For the last 25 years, the organization has been cloning, growing, and planting the world’s oldest and biggest trees. Why? To preserve those invaluable genetics. These are the trees who have stood the test of time, who have survived all manner of challenges for centuries and kept getting older and bigger. They are evolutionary marvels, and the secret to restoring our forests with hearty, long-lasting trees could very well lie in their DNA.

In this week's Northern Express, sister publication of The Ticker, Jillian Manning explores how AATA has built a living archival library of National Champion Trees (the largest and most impressive of their species in the world), preserving the genetic history of 130 tree species that stretch back millennia. Standing in the warehouse among the clones of these mighty trees is like achieving 1 degree of separation from the rock stars—nay, the gods—of the arboreal world. And after a quarter century of groundbreaking work, AATA is just getting started.

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