Washington Scientists Identify Multiple Causes In Rapid Dieoff Among White Pine Trees

[hatrack]

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Since white pines are scattered among other trees, their widespread decline isn't as apparent as it might be with trees such as Douglas firs, which grow abundantly in large swaths. "Everybody was talking about what was wrong with the white pines, but nobody was doing anything," he said.

He spent the next two years contacting every official and researcher he could find who might have an answer. He found Western white pines dying across the area with the same mysterious symptoms. He arranged to watch as a white pine at Washington Park Arboretum in Seattle was pulled down. Inside the tree, he found blue stain, a fungus that invades the sapwood of trees, clogging the conductive tissues. He began to get some answers with the help of university researchers in British Columbia. An expert there agreed to test samples of the blue stains Douglas had found in area trees.

The results stunned him. One of the trees, from a specimen in Mill Creek, had not one but several types of blue stain. At least one of the stains appears to be a type that researchers hadn't seen in Western Washington. The tests need to be independently verified at least twice more before Douglas can say so definitively.

He's now convinced beetles are attacking both the roots and the tops of the trees, depositing the blue stain funguses when laying eggs. His theory is eerily similar to what's happening in other parts of the West with different types of pines. Bark beetles have killed millions of acres of pines from New Mexico to British Columbia. The reasons are varied: Programs designed to suppress forest fires have let pines grow big enough to be susceptible to beetles. And pines weakened by droughts, rising global temperatures, and competition from other species are mores susceptible to beetles, said Greg Filip, a regional forest pathologist based in Portland, Ore., for the U.S. Forest Service. Filip guessed white pines may have begun declining more rapidly because they've become stressed by blister rust or other factors, which left the trees susceptible to the beetles.

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http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20090105/NEWS01/701059852&news01ad=1

[louis-t]

1. Gee, I wonder where those beerles came from?