The U.S. Forest Service and three universities will begin annual sudden oak death aerial surveys from May 22 to June 7, looking to see if the disease is spreading around the North Coast.
The agency and its collaborators will look for dead trees in Humboldt, Del Norte and Mendocino counties from the air, then follow up by contacting landowners for permission to collect samples from host species like oaks, tanoaks and California bay laurel trees.
In areas where the pathogen Phytopthera ramorum is confirmed, the University of California Cooperative Extension and county agricultural representatives will be available to help landowners with voluntary management and suppression options.
P. ramorum has killed hundreds of thousand of oaks in coastal California forests. The aerial surveys are critical to understanding the scope of the disease and how to develop a management program for it, said a press release by the California Oak Mortality Task Force.
Questions about the program can be fielded by Lisa Bell, sudden oak death monitoring outreach coordinator at (866) GOT-OAKS or lisabell@fs.fed.us.Eureka Times-Standard
