Jan 10, 2008 7:32 am US/Pacific
Sudden Oak Death Rising In Sonoma County
SANTA ROSA (BCN) ―
Hundreds of thousands of oak and tan oak trees on more than 75,000 acres in Sonoma County have died of Sudden Oak Death, according to a report on the county's response to the scourge.
The 75,000 acres, mostly in the west county, represent 17 percent of the county's forests and the remaining 73 percent of forested land will eventually become infested, the report states.
"Twice as many acres in Sonoma County have been infected with new mortality than in any other county in the state," one of the report's authors, Caerleon Safford, told the county's Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.
The disease is in 14 coastal counties in the state and in Curry County, Ore, according to the California Oak Mortality Task Force.
Safford, a Sudden Oak Death outreach and educational specialist with the Sonoma County Department of Emergency Services, said the trees that are killed by a fungus-like pathogen present a wildfire danger as both ground fuel and when they or their branches fall on power lines that start fires.
Dead wood produces many embers that threaten homes in close proximity to wildlife areas, Safford said. She said the Department of Emergency Services has secured a $148,000 grant and homeowners will receive between $2,000 and $4,000 next month to help them remove dead trees to create a 100-foot defensible space. There are 11,500 households in county areas affected by Sudden Oak Death.
But Safford said there are few grants available for fuel mitigation projects because there isn't a large national forest in the county.
The Department of Emergency Services and the University of California Cooperative Extension in Sonoma County developed a strategic response plan to the disease that first appeared in Marin and Santa Cruz counties in the mid-1990s.
The first year of the plan calls for $3.5 million for fire fuels reduction and mitigation, tree removal and treatment, education and outreach, a hazardous and infected tree survey, staff training and other expenses. Programs during subsequent years would cost $2.9 million annually.
The strategic plan said Sudden Oak Death is persistent, spreading and will not be eradicated.
"Therefore, it is a disease we have to learn to live with, a disease we need to manage," the report states.
The Board of Supervisors acknowledged the extent of the disease in the county and the difficulty of securing state and federal funding for mitigation efforts.
"I'd like to see some dollar amounts (on the mitigation efforts) so we can carry the message to the state," Supervisor Valerie Brown said.
(© CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Bay City News contributed to this report.)
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