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CapitalPress.com
Editorials are written by or
approved by members of the
Capital Press Editorial Board.
September 29, 2017
All other commentary pieces are
the opinions of the authors but
not necessarily this newspaper.
Opinion
O UR V IEW
Editorial Board
Editor & Publisher
Managing Editor
Joe Beach
Carl Sampson
opinions@capitalpress.com Online: www.capitalpress.com/opinion
The curse of the
Yellow Dragon
T
he hunt has all the makings of a Sherlock Holmes detective
story, complete with an exotic villain and a victim
desperately in need of rescue.
At risk is U.S. citrus fruit production, worth $3.4 billion a year.
Florida’s citrus production alone is worth $1 billion, according to the
National Agricultural Statistics Service. As a whole, Florida’s entire citrus
industry, including growers, processors and packers, generates $9 billion a year.
But something has been killing citrus trees in Florida. The number of orange
trees has dropped 25 percent, from 80 million to 60 million, in the past nine years.
The number of grapefruit trees has dropped 64 percent, from 14 million to 5 million, according to USDA.
Only a few years ago, Florida had nearly 1 million acres of citrus groves. Today, it has less than half
that, 410,700 acres.
The villain is huanglongbing — Chinese for “yellow dragon disease.” Discovered nearly
100 years ago in China, the disease has been decimating the citrus industry around the
globe. Since its discovery, the bacterial disease has killed more than 100 million citrus
trees in 40 countries. Yellow dragon disease is also known as citrus greening and
by the initials HLB.
There exists no cure for yellow dragon
disease. It is spread by the Asian citrus
psyllid, a tiny insect that sucks the sap
of an infected tree and infects the next
tree it visits. Yellow dragon disease
fi rst causes the leaves to turn yellow.
Then the fruit turns greenish yellow
and becomes unmarketable. Finally,
within a few years, the tree dies.
Scientifi c detectives are using
high-tech tools to gain an understanding
of the yellow dragon and the psyllids that
have spread it to 15 states or U.S. territories,
File Photo
including Florida and California, the nation’s largest
An
orange
infected
with
citrus fruit producers.
huanglongbing — yellow
At the University of Florida, Clemson
dragon disease.
University, Texas A&M University and the USDA
Agricultural Research Service, scientists are
undertaking a computerized search for varieties of citrus trees most resistant to
the disease. They hope to use the information to breed varieties of trees resistant to
yellow dragon disease.
This narrative will sound familiar to hazelnut growers in Oregon. Eastern fi lbert blight took hold in
the hazelnut trees of Oregon’s Willamette Valley in the mid-1980s. The fungal disease spread through the
valley despite farmers’ efforts to control it using fungicides and by pruning and removing infected trees.
Shawn Mehlenbacher, a Oregon State University hazelnut breeder, led the successful effort to study
hazelnut trees from around the world and develop new varieties that are resistant to EFB.
His is one of the great success stories of OSU agricultural research.
“Without the Oregon Agricultural Experiment Station the hazelnut industry would disappear,” he said in
a 2014 university video. “But because we have new resistant varieties it is expanding, not disappearing.”
Oregon’s hazelnut industry, which produces 99 percent of the nation’s crop, continues to expand. Today,
Oregon farmers grow hazelnuts on 37,000 acres — and plant more EFB-resistant trees each year.
This success — the ability of scientifi c research to overcome a seemingly insurmountable problem —
should be encouraging to citrus growers in Florida, California and elsewhere.
With adequate resources — hundreds of millions of dollars have already been funneled into research
from the industry and the state and federal governments — scientists will be able to breed citrus trees
resistant to huanglongbing. They will slay the yellow dragon forever.
The villain is
huanglongbing —
Chinese for
“yellow dragon
disease.”
Discovered
nearly 100 years
ago in China,
the disease
has been
decimating
the citrus
industry
around
the globe.
Readers’ views
Purpose of forest
management
changes
Growing up in Cascade
Locks, Ore., in the 1940s I
would listen with awe to the
many stories about wildfi res
told by my family and older
friends. Stories of fi re jump-
ing the Columbia, people
covering their shingle roofs
with burlap soaked with water
to protect their homes from
cinders, people riding logging
trains out of the mountains
while trestles were on fi re, etc.
Scary stuff. But, they made
me believe that fi re preven-
tion was very important.
In the 1950s and 1960s I
spent summers working for
the Forest Service. Fire pre-
vention was the No. 1 prior-
ity for the Columbia Gorge
Ranger District and every-
thing we did was done with
the understanding we were
doing this to better protect our
forests.
We opened trails that had
not been worked since the
CCC boys left at the begin-
ning of World War II. We
opened and built roads to
provide quicker access for
fi re suppression and for po-
tential fi re breaks. In the Bull
Run watershed small pockets
of old dying trees were clear
cut to reduce the potential for
lightning-caused fi res. These
small managed clear cuts
were done to mimic the ideal
forest environment one would
hope for in the event of a fi re.
The roads to these clear
cuts were planned to provide
for fi re protection with their
construction being done by
the logging companies. Funds
from the sale of the logs
would go into the federal cof-
fers to be distributed back to
the counties, schools, roads,
etc. Everything was done to
prevent mega fi res.
This appeared to me to be
a win-win deal. Fire hazard
trees were being removed,
roads were being constructed
for quick access and funding
was being provided for neces-
sary services.
Then the emphasis began
to shift. Trails were for rec-
reation, clear cuts were ugly,
fi re could be beautiful if you
would just wait a hundred
years, companies were be-
lieved to be making money off
our trees, lawsuits were fi led,
roads needed to be destroyed
to limit access. We needed
to bring the forest back to its
prehistoric state. All of this
was happening with the pop-
ulation increasing and our cli-
mate changing.
Now we are paying the
price for this shortsightedness
and lack of common sense.
We have to decide for whom
we are managing these for-
ests. The native population
at one time may have burned
the forests periodically. Their
management objectives were
different from what our ob-
jective should be. We need to
be thinking about 100 years
or more from now as well as
today.
Carlisle Harrison
Hermiston, Ore.
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Plan reduced
NW forest
management
Regarding your opinion
on managing forests, which
was excellent, a correction
needs to be made that it was
President Clinton and Vice
President Gore that led and
created the “NW Plan” that
reduced forest management
by 85 percent in California,
Oregon and Washington.
Subsequent presidents
did nothing to alter that
fact while every single year
throughout only the North-
west, approximately 4 bil-
lion to 5 billion board-feet
of growth continued to add
fuels for eventual fires —
fires that we are now expe-
riencing.
Yes, national parks and
monuments are burning,
too, but that is expected
where “preservation poli-
cies are followed by law.”
That is not the case on
our national forests and
lands managed by the Bu-
reau of Land Management,
yet the NW Plan so restrict-
ed management under the
premise “it was to protect
the spotted owl” that fires
are now burning those hab-
itats by the thousands of
acres.
We need to manage our
federal forests on a land-
scape or watershed scale by
treatments that alter contin-
uous fuel patterns and pro-
vide improved wildlife hab-
itat! It can easily be done
with congressional action.
By the way, I am a for-
mer forest supervisor, in-
cluding two decades of fire-
fighting plus National Fire
Team experience.
Ted Stubblefi eld
Ridgefi eld, Wash.
Obama not to
blame for forest
management
A recent editorial about
federal land management
and fi res covers a topic that
is close to my heart — the
use of active forest manage-
ment to better set up our na-
tional wildlands for the inev-
itable wildfi res. I was happy
to see that you got much of it
right, especially with respect
to the need to place thinning
treatments in strategic plac-
es in order to better manage
fi res.
However (and this is
critically important) the ed-
itorial took an irresponsible
turn when you chose to lay
the blame on the Obama ad-
ministration. Your statement,
(“(A)t some point the Obama
administration decided near-
ly all federal forests were
off-limits to logging, the best
and only way to manage for-
ests”) is fl at out wrong and
unnecessarily divisive. Does
every issue have to be viewed
through the lens of partisan
politics?
Here are the facts: Ac-
cording to the Oregon De-
partment of Forestry, federal
annual timber harvest levels
in our state were actually
higher during the Obama ad-
ministration than during the
G.W. Bush administration
(503.75 billion board feet
harvested per year 2009-2016
vs. 324 billion board feet per
year 2001-2008). Interesting-
ly, the harvest level per year
during the Clinton adminis-
tration was even higher (665
billion board feet/year 1993-
2000). I see absolutely no
evidence that any particular
administration “decided that
federal forests were off-lim-
its to logging” as you have so
boldly stated — let alone the
Obama administration.
In my beloved Blue
Mountains National Forests,
harvest levels have also risen
over the past 8 years, due in
part to the collaborative ap-
proaches to forest manage-
ment that were encouraged
(and funded) by the past ad-
ministration.
If you want to blame fed-
eral laws for our current sit-
uation, it is popular to blame
the National Environmental
Policy Act, the Wilderness
Act, and the Endangered
Species Act. Be aware that
these laws were passed (by
Congress) and signed (by the
president) in the 1960’s and
1970’s — under the Johnson
and Nixon administrations.
There is enough partisan
politics being played in our
country right now, and to fur-
ther polarize the public in the
west by falsely laying blame
for the 2017 fi re season on
the Obama administration
only makes it worse. I would
expect the opinions of the
editorial board to be based
on real facts, not “alternative
facts” or partisan hyperbole.
I can get enough of that by
reading letters to the editor
and social media.
W.C. (Bill) Aney
Pendleton Ore.