The disturbing story of the epidemic afflicting our oaks and madrones is being reported in the press, but mostly in fragments. In this issue we provide a fuller picture, telling how the pathogen causing it was discovered, what scientists have learned so far, and what remains unknown. We hope to alert readers to the significance of this epidemic, the need to do everything possible to address it, and suggest what each of us can do—though unfortunately it isn’t much at this point—to help prevent its spread.

Within every story lie many other stories. In a magazine article you must choose a focus and stay with it. Elizabeth Cole, in her report on Sudden Oak Death (SOD), does not dwell on political ramifications, nor does she delve into personal politics within the scientific community. Instead, she keeps her eye on the physical nature of the ominous problem and the quest for a solution.

The story keeps evolving, often in surprising ways. On January 8 scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, confirmed that the oak-killing pathogen had been identified in redwood suckers (shoots) collected last September in Big Sur. They stressed that the mere presence of Phytophthora ramorum does not prove it sickens or kills redwoods. Studies are in progress. They broke their silence before results were in because someone else was about to make news about an infected redwood.

That someone is Ken Bovero, a certified arborist whose name does not appear in our story. He has no distinguished letters after his name, for he went into the tree business right after high school. But he has worked with trees for some 20 years, and his powers of observation are keen. He and his wife do business as Marin County Arborists.

“About mid-1994,” Bovero said, “I noticed that a client in Kentfield was losing a tanoak.” The tree had bleeding cankers, borers, and other symptoms. “I recommended removing it and we did that.” Two months later, the symptoms appeared on three other tanoaks, and then on other clients’ trees. Puzzled, Bovero consulted Ralph Zingaro, a licensed pest control advisor who had studied with an expert in tree decline. He suspected environmental stress, recalling massive dieoffs of dogwood on the East Coast that correlated with acid rain, and the decline of ponderosa pine in the San Bernardino Mountains, linked to air pollution.
Some months later, Bovero saw sick tanoaks in Mill Valley and tried to alert scientists. Then he saw the symptoms on a live oak, and “it was clear to me that this was becoming an epidemic,” he said. Stepping up his campaign for scientific attention, he became so bold as to invite scientists attending a conference at UC Berkeley to come for a picnic and examine some sick trees. Five came, among them Pavel Svihra, horticulture advisor at the UC Cooperative Extension in Marin County, who recalls that Bovero was “very gracious.”

Svihra said he first saw affected tanoaks in 1995, summoned by “three ladies who had been walking the same route for years and noticed that something was wrong.” He fielded other calls, an increasing number after live oaks began to succumb. “It became dramatic as dying trees became infested with staggering numbers of beetles,”he said. In September 1998, an Associated Press reporter interviewed Svihra and in her story referred to sudden oak death. The term caught on and SOD became national news.

Meanwhile, Ken Bovero—who, feeling slighted, thought he deserved some credit for his role—was more or less forgotten.

“He deserves credit for recognizing the condition, alerting scientists, and also for identifying some of the host plants,” said Susan Frankel, who represents the USDA Forest Service on the Oak Mortality Task Force, which is now trying to combat the epidemic.

About a year ago Bovero came upon two dead or dying redwoods in Mill Valley, but this time he did not call the experts. Instead, after obtaining a permit and felling one of the trees, he chopped into it and sent the sample to an independent laboratory. When he got the results he called the Marin Independent Journal to report that a pathogen, not fully identified but resembling the oak killer, P. ramorum, had been found in a redwood.

It was because this story was about to be published and in response to reporter Richard Halstead’s inquiry that UC scientists announced at that particular time that they were studying redwoods because P. ramorum had been identified in suckers taken at Pfeiffer State Park.
Everyone involved in the story of this epidemic has something to add, and there are many variants, because emotion and personal perspective figure in any endeavor, including science.

Also in this issue of Coast & Ocean, naturalist and artist Ida Geary tells of seaweed discoveries she made while teaching about native plants near Crissy Field in San Francisco. “After I retired,” she told me, “one of my students decided to keep walking along this shore, and in other places too. She has done that, and a group goes out with her. So I started something.” That’s not in her story, but it’s important.

Covering the California coast often means writing about people like Bovero and Geary, who care about its life and help to protect it in uncounted ways, large and small, visibly and invisibly—people who start something that then goes on.

—Rasa Gustaitis