July 1, 2016
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Volume of
dead trees
could make
removal
dificult
By TIM HEARDEN
Capital Press
ANDERSON, Calif. —
The sheer number of dead and
dying trees in Central Califor-
nia forests could make their
harvest and removal dificult,
an oficial of one of the na-
tion’s largest timber compa-
nies says.
Drought and pests are
among the causes for a record
66 million dead trees in South-
ern Sierra Nevada forests, the
U.S. Forest Service concluded
after conducting aerial sur-
veys.
Sierra Paciic Industries
could postpone some of its
harvests of green timber from
federal and private lands to ac-
commodate removing and us-
ing some of the dead trees, said
Mark Pawlicki, the company’s
director of corporate affairs
and sustainability.
“However, the amount of
dead and dying timber on fed-
eral lands greatly exceeds our
ability to process the timber
into lumber,” Pawlicki said in
an email.
“That’s primarily due to the
fact that the greatest mortality
is in the area east of Fresno,
and there is only one sawmill
in that region,” he said. “We
take volume from the area
mostly north of Yosemite (Na-
tional Park) into our Sonora
and Chinese Camp sawmills.”
Forestry oficials an-
nounced on June 22 that they
had identiied an additional 26
million dead trees since last
October in a six-county region
on the San Joaquin Valley’s
eastern edge in addition to the
40 million that had died since
2010.
Four consecutive years of
severe drought, a dramatic rise
in bark beetle infestations and
higher temperatures were the
leading factors in the tree die-
offs, according to the Forest
Service.
Pawlicki said Sierra Paciic
is also seeing some mortality
on its private forestlands as
the beetle infestation moves
northward in the Sierra. The
infestation is already north of
Highway 50, which links Sac-
ramento to Lake Tahoe, but
it is spotty and mostly in the
middle to lower elevations, he
said.
“We have loggers who are
solely dedicated to salvage
logging to make sure we har-
vest the dead trees as soon as
possible,” he said.
The Forest Service has set
aside $32 million for “safe-
ty-focused” forest restoration
along roads, trails and rec-
reation sites, oficials said.
To date, the Forest Service
has felled over 77,000 haz-
ard trees, treated over 13,000
acres along 228 miles of roads
around communities and rec-
reation areas, and created
1,100 acres of fuel breaks,
according to an agency news
release. Work on 15,000 addi-
tional acres is ongoing.
The die-offs set an omi-
nous tone for ire season, U.S.
Agriculture Secretary Tom
Vilsack said in prepared re-
marks.
“While the ire risk is cur-
rently the most extreme in
California because of the tree
mortality, forests across the
country are at risk of wildire
and urgently need restoration,
requiring a massive effort to
remove this tinder and im-
prove their health,” Vilsack
said.
The secretary called anew
for Congress to reform how
the Forest Service pays for
ireighting — a goal that’s
been elusive for several years
despite bipartisan support.
For the fourth straight year,
the House of Representatives
has passed a bill known as the
Resilient Federal Forests Act,
which would allow the Fed-
eral Emergency Management
Agency to give disaster fund-
ing to the Forest Service and
Bureau of Land Management
when they have exhausted
their ireighting budgets.
CapitalPress.com
13
California
New citrus-funded lab to tackle huanglongbing
By TIM HEARDEN
Capital Press
The citrus industry and
University of California-Riv-
erside are teaming to build a
top-notch laboratory that will
enable researchers to tackle
the deadly tree disease huan-
glongbing.
The grower-funded Cali-
fornia Citrus Research Foun-
dation has raised $8 million to
construct a biosecurity-level
3 building near the universi-
ty, which has more than 100
years’ experience in citrus re-
search.
The facility will enable
Georgios Vidalakis, director of
UC-Riverside’s Citrus Clonal
Protection Program, and others
to do work with plant patho-
gens that previously couldn’t
be done in Southern Califor-
nia.
The nearest high-level
pathogen lab is at UC-Davis,
and materials often must be
sent as far away as Texas or
Florida to be tested, Vidalakis
said.
“We are involved in re-
search of the disease but in
collaboration with research-
ers who are 3,000 or 4,000
miles away,” Vidalakis said.
Courtesy of UC-Riverside
An artist’s rendition shows a planned new laboratory near the University of California-Riverside that
will specialize in research into defeating the deadly citrus tree disease huanglongbing. The project will
be built with the help of $8 million in donations from the citrus industry.
“It makes it very dificult .. It
doesn’t make sense for a land-
grant institution like UC-Riv-
erside, especially with our ex-
pertise in citrus, not to have a
facility like that.”
The level-3 lab will enable
scientists to house the live bac-
terium and develop resistance
and tolerance in plants, he said.
Researchers can study interac-
tions between the pathogen,
vector and plant — “the three
corners of the triangle that
cause the disease,” he said.
Scientists are making “a
big effort” at genome editing
of citrus trees in an attempt
to make them not as attractive
to Asian citrus psyllids — the
carrier of huanglongbing — or
“deal with the disease a little
better,” Vidalakis said.
“It’s not a question of why
we need it,” he said of the lab.
“The question is why we don’t
have it already. It cannot be
more important. We need it
immediately.”
Huanglongbing — which
has devastated the citrus in-
dustries in Florida, Georgia,
Louisiana, South Carolina and
Texas — has been found in 21
citrus trees in California.
Huanglongbing isn’t harm-
ful to humans or animals but
causes discoloration of fruit
and leaves and eventually kills
the tree.
Nearly one-third of Califor-
nia’s land mass is now under
quarantine for the psyllid,
requiring shipped fruit to be
free of leaves and debris. The
state’s Citrus Pest and Dis-
ease Prevention Program has
been talking to growers about
adopting a regional quaran-
tine structure under which
fruit moving between regions
would have to undergo a wet
wash.
The new lab will accept
projects from researchers
around the world, said Al-
yssa Houtby, public affairs
director for the more than
2,000-member
California
Citrus Mutual.
“The priority is inding
solutions to huanglongbing,”
Houtby said. “It’s very sig-
niicant. Until now, there was
not a facility in California that
was solely dedicated to HLB
research.”
Construction is set to begin
in October, and researchers
are already preparing to seek
permits for planned experi-
ments.
Vidalakis said he expects
the new laboratory facility to
be functioning by next sum-
mer.
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