Posted on 05/07/2017 7:28:33 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
The trees that shade, cool and feed people from Ventura County to the Mexican border are dying so fast that within a few years it’s possible the region will look, feel, sound and smell much less pleasant than it does now.
“We’re witnessing a transition to a post-oasis landscape in Southern California,” says Greg McPherson, a supervisory research forester with the U.S. Forest Service who has been studying what he and others call an unprecedented die-off of the trees greening Southern California’s parks, campuses and yards.
Botanists in recent years have documented insect and disease infestations as they’ve hop-scotched about the region, devastating Griffith Park’s sycamores and destroying over 100,000 willows in San Diego County’s Tijuana River Valley Regional Park, for example
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Yes, you did.
In this case a diversity of species is a good idea.
Fewer words/sentences is cheating....
Johnny Appleseed was correct....
Lumber has value. Plus CO2 secrestration for yhe Libs.
Yup - lazy gov’t bureaucrat says he needs his budget increased
There are some bugs doing the damage.
And I love that National Park.
LOL. Sounds very reasonable.
Someone has probably researched that!
Sycamores are super long-lived. Willow are usually the opposite.
In the case of the sycamore it is under attack from an insect introduced to the US via goods imported by ship on wooden pallets, as I recall.
I understand they got here by shipping containers.
The same way all the other invasive foreign insects got here.
The answer’s in the past...dutch elm disease...
from link:
As it swept through the British countryside, Dutch elm disease wiped out 25million trees.
But among the few survivors was a specimen discovered 33 years ago by horticulturist Paul King, who decided to take some cuttings.
And now, after years of painstaking research, he has developed a tree resistant to the infection.
All of which puts California in a sort of Catch 22. The inescts killing these trees are readily controlled by neonicitinoid pesticides, but neonicitinoid insecticides are frowned upon by the powers that be in California because when used in other situations they kill beneficial insects as well.
It’s happened before - the Eastern US looks totally different than it did when settlers first arrived. The American chestnut that was ridiculously common and highly rot resistant and which was used by settlers for fence rails and cabins is now long gone- not because they were all chopped down, but because of chestnut blight. It was an important component of the diet of the now extinct passenger pigeon...and many other animals and game birds.
A similar story goes for the American Elm, for all practical purposes devastated by the introduced Dutch Elm Disease.
The beeches that were once thick all over the Ohio region and supplied mast in odd years for many species, also including the now extinct passenger pigeon... were greatly reduced because settlers recognized the beech’s need for moist, fertile soil and so, sought out beech groves to clear for farming.
There’s now another introduced bug, the emerald ash borer, which is doing a number on American ash trees, a commercially important lumber species. Time will tell how big an impact that’s going to make as it spreads out from Chicago.
And some new bug’s been introduced lately that’s killing our sweet bay trees here.
Another nasty thing is wiping out our citrus trees here; it is called lethal yellowing, a disease that hitchhikes on an introduced insect. Since these are recently introduced pests trees have about as much defense against them as the American Indian did against smallpox. There will be survivors but only after a lot are wiped out, leaving gaping holes in the food chain, forest succession, etc.
My son and I took a driving tour last August through Sequia - Kings Canyon parks. I could not believe how many of the Sierras big trees are dead and dieing. A few years ago, we saw bark beetle infestations in Colorado doing the same thing.
Here on the San Francisco Peninsula, our magnificent centuries-old oak tress are dying at a fast rate. There’s a pathogen that causes “Sudden Oak Death” (SOD). Healthy trees succumb very quickly. The pathogen can be spread on your boots as you hike. You see SOD warning signs all over.
I have no doubt what they are describing I see true. This is the first I’ve heard of the problem in SoCal.
Didn’t they get here in furniture or shipping crates?
boy it would be nice to see streets lined with elms again. I remember them from my youth.
Yep, those dead trees are homes to bugs and fungi and organisms that may evolve to finally solve all our problems.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.