- Note - We suggest the investigation of this mystery pathogen
must include the possibility of it
- being a biowarfare agent released on America. -ed
-
-
- SAN FRANCISCO -- The world's
tallest trees, California's majestic redwoods, are susceptible to an aggressive
disease that has killed vast numbers of oaks in the past three years, scientists
announced Wednesday.
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- Though it is rare for a disease to spread from one species
to another, plants throughout California's coastal regions appear to be
susceptible, scientists said. That raises the risk of the disease spreading
to the nation's interior.
''That's really a huge concern,'' said Matteo Garbelotto, a University
of California-Berkeley plant pathologist. ''We don't have any other diseases
like this that we know of in North America.''
Scientists are trying to confirm the presence of the disease, known as
Sudden Oak Death, in the Sierra Nevada after a sample was found on a maple
tree last year. If the disease has infected forests there, it would mean
it had traveled 100 miles from the coast, across the Central Valley.
The disease has been found only in redwood saplings so far. California's
giant redwood groves, which draw tourists from around the world, are not
immediately threatened. ''The only tree that represents the whole country,
if you will, is the redwood,'' Garbelotto said. ''For many reasons, it's
a symbol of the country.''
Saplings of another important tree found throughout the West, Douglas fir,
also have been infected, the scientists said. But the impact on California's
timber industry does not appear to be substantial, at least for now.
The findings raise to 19 the number of species known to be infected by
Sudden Oak Death. The disease is caused by a contagious and aggressive
pathogen for which no effective treatment is known. Many of those plants
act only as hosts and survive.
Since the pathogen, Phytophthora ramorum, has been found only in redwood
and fir saplings, scientists don't know whether it can infect and kill
mature trees. Sudden Oak Death has claimed tens of thousands of live oaks,
a prized California species, from Monterey to the Oregon border.
The scientists said it may be years before they know how seriously the
fungus-like disease will affect the giant trees. Redwoods grow only along
a narrow coastal fog belt. They can reach 350 feet and live 2,000 years.
Giant sequoias, another redwood variety, grow only in the Sierra Nevada.
Federal regulations ban interstate shipment of the 19 host plants or their
products from 12 infected counties. But the biggest impact on redwood and
Douglas fir, a nearly $1 billion-a-year segment of California's forest
products market, will be restrictions on bark, a preferred garden mulch,
that is shipped within the state. Logs and lumber stripped of bark can
move freely, although companies must now obtain a permit, said Larry Hawkins
of the U.S. Agriculture Department.
The industry says no infected trees have been found in commercial forests.
''We're unwilling to accept that since someone says something is found
in one place that it's going to be found in another,'' said Donn Zea, California
Forest Products Commission's president.
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