Oregon oak wine barrels

From the Oregon Wine Press:

Barrel By...

“I have noticed people in tasting rooms talking about American versus French oak barrels in regard to winemaking. What is the difference? Is one better than the other?” - Randy, Portland

There are actually several differences, but if you ask me, quality isn’t one of them; it’s more about preference.

The wood for French oak barrels comes from several different forests; Allier, Limousin, Nevers, Tronçais and Vosges are considered the best. Each has its own micro-climate and soils, affecting the wood, and in turn, the wine.  

French oak is split along its natural grains to create staves. After the wood is split, the staves are dried in open air for about 24 months. Because of the quality of the forests, the reputation of the cooperage and the time-intensive production, French oak barrels often cost between $500 and $1000. 

The way the French barrels express themselves in wine is considered to be more delicate and less “oaky” than their American counterparts, imparting notes of vanilla bean, cedar and clove — among others. Its subtle flavor profile is desirable for wines such as Pinot Noir, which is more sensitive to the wood’s influence. French oak’s tighter grains are also believed to have slightly higher tannins levels, helping the wine to age.

American oak barrels come from several different forests, mostly in Midwestern states like Missouri, but also from Oregon and Virginia. Unlike French oak, its origin is of minor significance, placing the value with the reputation of the cooperage. 

Traditionally, American oak barrels were made by sawing the wood into staves — rather than splitting them — and drying them in a kiln — as opposed to open air. These barrels impart stronger oak flavors with slightly sweeter notes like vanilla extract, coconut, sawdust and dill. With that says, many American coopers have recently incorporated more French techniques to soften the character of their barrels. Reduced production time and shipping costs are two reasons American oak barrels are generally less expensive — new barrels cost between $200 and $500. 

There is no firm rule dictating who uses what type of barrel; and certainly, though the prices might lead you to believe differently, there is no quality difference between the two. It really comes down to how a winemaker wants to make a particular wine. For example, because of its strong effect on flavor, American oak is typically used on heartier wines like Syrah, Cabernet, Zinfandel and Malbec. In fact, in some Old World regions, such as Rioja in Spain, American oak is preferred to add more muscle and complexity. 

Cooperage competition has increased over the years. France and the U.S. are joined by Hungary, Slovenia and even Russia in the barrel market. Different types of wood have also made the industry more interesting. Barrels made of chestnut, pine, redwood and acacia simply add to the winemaker’s toolbox, ultimately allowing consumers greater choices and more to discuss.

Cheers, Jennifer Cossey

Oak is Ashland's Tree of the Year

FROM THE MAIL TRIBUNE

 

Property owner Don Greene says the tree has a sentinel spirit

 

Karolina Lavagnino stands next to an Oregon white oak tree that’s outside the home she rents on Iowa Street in Ashland. The tree was selected as Ashland’s 2012 Tree of the Year.  (Julia Moore)

 

A North Portland community protects one of Oregon's last oak savannahs

From the Portland Tribune:

Published Dec 20, 2012, 10:25am

By Tamara Feingold

Image: Courtesy Friends Of Overlook Bluff

 

Tucked into a bend on tranquil N Willamette Drive, just south of the University of Portland, a single tree stands on a steep green embankment, its branches reaching out toward the railyards below. Nailed on its moss-covered trunk is a plate reading, “Portland Heritage Tree, Oregon White Oak.” But this is no shield against the creeping encroachment of developers and the nearby university—emboldened by relaxed city zoning codes.

Friends of Overlook Bluff is the collective name of the 15 volunteers who are stepping up to preserve the oak, and convince the city of Portland to acquire the land from its private owner. In a city with about 19 trees per acre, the quest to save a single tree may seem odd, but the lone oak extends its roots into one of the city’s last undeveloped, privately owned properties east of the Willamette River. Before 1850, oak savannas like Overlook Bluff formed a corridor and migratory pathway stretching from British Columbia to California. Today, only 20 percent of this original riparian land in Oregon’s Willamette River Basin remains forested. And that percentage is shrinking fast. In 2010, with the city’s blessing, UP bought up 55,000 square feet of previously protected land on the bluffs to build a parking lot.

“I think the focus at first is this one tree, this one acre,” says Friends founder and neighborhood resident Ruth Oclander, “but all of a sudden the significance is so far reaching.” 

Oclander, a descendant of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of Boston’s greenbelt (and uncle to the author of Portland’s 1903 parks plan), believes that saving the tiny outcropping will be the first step to building a network of urban wilderness trails from the bluff to St. Johns. The single acre of untouched land is a stitch in the larger ecological fabric that supports deer, coyotes, red-tailed hawks, and great-horned owls. 

“We have to think that if we preserve this land,” Oclander says, “there will be something there one hundred years from now, and it won’t be just houses.”

Riparian restoration along McMinnville’s Cozine Creek

From the YamhillValley News Register:

Oct 27, 2012 

 Restoration work is protecting the city-owned riparian area along the Cozine Creek corridor and hillside behind the McMinnville Police Department building on NE Adams Street. it's an important project in removing growth of an invasive plant species and clearing areas overgrown with blackberries and other weeds.

Restoration began about 18 months ago. Tim Stieber, former Yamhill Soil and Water Conservation District executive director, and I approached Jay Pearson, city parks and recreation director, about partnering on the project. We wanted to remove the invasive weeds and restore the area by planting native trees and shrubs.

YSWCD was especially interested in the project because patches of invasive Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica) were growing near the stream but were unreachable behind the 6-foot-tall blackberry brambles.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture identifies Japanese knotweed as a native of Eurasia that was introduced to the United States as an ornamental. These plans, according to ODA, "grow vigorously along roadsides, waste areas, streams and ditch banks; create dense colonies that exclude native vegetation; and greatly alter natural tree regeneration. Established populations are extremely persistent and do not respond to mowing or cutting. Large infestations can be eliminated with approved herbicides, but treatments are costly and time consuming. It poses a significant threat in riparian areas, where it disperses during flood events, rapidly colonizing scoured shorelines, islands and adjacent forest land."

City and YSWCD staffs decided to apply for a small grant from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board. We planned to mechanically remove the blackberries, chemically treat and kill the knotweed, and replant the 1.2-acre area with native trees and shrubs. The OWEB small grant program, designed to fund small-scale projects that improve watershed health, is competitive, so it was good news when our proposal was accepted.

Last fall, YSWCD hired a contractor to mow the blackberries with a skid-steer mower, and we removed a small amount of concrete fill that had settled into the bottom areas. Because of the steep slope on part of the site, the Yamhill County corrections crew assisted us, using weed-whackers on hard-to-reach areas. It took more than three days to remove the blackberries and knotweed.

After the first mowing, weeds were allowed to grow back partially. Once green re-growth appeared, it was chemically treated with a herbicide approved for use on stream sides.

Knotweed is particularly invasive and known to re-sprout from small stem segments. Therefore, YSWCD staff decided to pile and burn the mowed plant material before winter flooding could flush plants downstream, preventing establishment of additional invasive patches. In the spring, we re-treated the entire site chemically for the knotweed and blackberries that came back.

For the re-planting portion of the project, district staff and local volunteers potted up bare root plants purchased at the 2011 YSWCD native plant sale and grew them out another year at the Miller Woods native plant nursery. The extra grow-time should make the plants hardier and give them a greater survival rate once they are in the ground.

Sunrise Rotary Club members had been instrumental in successful development of the wetland at Joe Dancer Park, so Pearson asked them for help with re-planting along the Cozine. The club believes this restoration project is another important public improvement of natural resources within the city.

The restoration planting will include Oregon white oak, Douglas fir, big leaf maple, Oregon ash, Nootka rose, Oregon grape, red-flowering currant, Douglas spirea and Pacific ninebark. Also, the area will be seeded with blue wild rye, which typically is used for restoration because of its hardy growth. Plants will be surrounded by chicken wire to protect them from the deer that frequent the area.

Unfortunately, because of the dry fall weather, we were forced to postpone the final planting until early November. Look for public announcements inviting community members to participate in the work party.

And thanks go to all our partners for making this restoration project possible.

Guest writer Marie Vicksta has been a conservation planner with the Yamhill Soil and Water Conservation District for more than two years. She works primarily with private landowners to implement projects that improve water quality, reduce erosion and enhance wildlife habitat.

Submitted photos
The hillside behind the McMinnville Police Department’s parking lot borders Cozine Creek. Patches of invasive Japanese knotweed, upper right, had to be removed carefully. A skid-steer mower, above left, cut down the blackberry brambles and other brush to prepare the site for replanting with native plants and grass.

USFS Honors Oak Habitat Restoration work

Honoring Some Conservation Partners (excerpted)

Posted At : October 19, 2012 8:10 AM

Yesterday the Department of the Interior had a ceremony to honor some of our partners and their extraordinary work.

In the Pacific Northwest, the Central Umpqua-Mid Klamath Oak Habitat Cooperative Conservation Partnership Initiative is restoring more than 2,000 acres of Oregon white oak habitat by removing encroaching conifers, reseeding native grasses and applying prescribed fire.  The exclusion of fire had degraded and highly fragmented oak habitat, which is important for terrestrial neo-tropical migratory birds.  In addition to restoring habitat, this partnership provides local tribal employment in up to 90 percent of the on-the-ground work.

Note: The whole article is here.

Also, in the Mail Tribune:

Lomakatsi wins conservation award
Group has worked to keep region's ecosystems healthy
By Paul Fattig
Mail Tribune
October 22, 2012 2:00 AM

A collaborative effort to restore the natural oak habitat in Southern Oregon and far Northern California, led by the Ashland-based Lomakatsi Restoration Project, received a national conservation award Thursday.

Lomakatsi Director Marko Bey, along with several representatives of other partners in the ongoing effort, were on hand to receive the Partners in Conservation Award when it was presented by U.S. Department of Interior officials in Washington, D.C. The effort includes a 23-member partnership to restore more than 2,000 acres of oak woodland ecosystems in Jackson and Douglas counties in Oregon and Siskiyou County in California.

Known as the Central Umpqua-Mid-Klamath Oak Habitat Conservation Project, the work includes removal of encroaching conifers, reseeding native grasses and using prescribed fire to restore oak environments.

The work began a year ago and is expected to be completed next year.

Less than 10 percent of the oak habitat that once existed in Oregon and Northern California remains, according to Interior Department estimates.

"The Partners in Conservation Awards offer wonderful examples of how America's greatest conservation legacies are created when communities from a wide range of backgrounds work together," said Deputy Interior Secretary David J. Hayes, in a prepared statement.

"These awards recognize dedicated citizens from across our nation who collaborate to conserve and restore America's great outdoors, to encourage youth involvement in conservation and to forge solutions to complex natural resource challenges."

The effort is different because of its unique approach, added Robyn Thorson, regional director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Pacific Region.

"The strength of this initiative is that instead of taking a piecemeal approach to resource management, the partners are focusing their efforts toward restoring oak habitats through connected landscapes and corridors," she said.

"Their collaborative approach brings in expertise and good science from all participating partners and helps leverage funding to achieve better restoration," she added.

Bey cited the partnership approach for the success of the project.

"This cutting-edge, collaborative, conservation effort brings together a coalition of nonprofit organizations, landowners and federal and state natural resource management agencies who share a collective mission and interest in improving the condition and function of oak woodland habitats," he said.

"This project demonstrates a model for accomplishing landscape-scale ecosystem restoration where project partners share resources and expertise for conserving a critically important habitat for wildlife," he added.

The project includes working with 20 private landowners to restore the health of the oak habitat, creating an important connection to surrounding federal lands for wildlife, officials said.

Scientists have identified oak habitat as the primary habitat in the Pacific Northwest for terrestrial neo-tropical migratory birds. In Oregon and California, oak woodlands and savannahs are richer in wildlife than any other terrestrial system, providing habitat for more than 200 species, plus many plants and other organisms.

However, because of development and the exclusion of wildfires, the oak habitat that once blanketed much of the region has become one of the most threatened ecosystems, officials said.

The U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service provided $1.8 million in funding, and project partners brought in more than $2 million in other funds and contributions for the collaborative effort. Participating property owners receive financial benefits for embracing conservation practices on their properties that protect, enhance or restore declining oak habitats.

In addition to Lomakatsi, core members of the partnership include the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the nonprofit Klamath Bird Observatory.

Other partners include The Klamath Tribes, Northern California Resource Center, Douglas County Soil & Water Conservation District, U.S. Bureau of Land Management, The Nature Conservancy, California and Oregon Departments of Fish and Wildlife, California and Oregon Departments of Forestry, Oregon State University Extension Service, Jackson Soil and Water Conservation District, Defenders of Wildlife, Colestin Rural Fire Department, Jackson County Small Woodlands Association, Southern Oregon Land Conservancy, Oregon Oaks Working Group and private landowners.

For information about the oak habitat restoration project, see lomakatsi.org/oak-habitat-restoration/.

Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 541-776-4496 or email him at pfattig@mailtribune.com.

De-paving, North Portland, Oregon

Friends of Baltimore Woods and DePave held a volunteer “food, music and sledge hammers” party on Saturday, July 28, 2012 to remove a two-acre parking lot in North Portland.

The groups are working to protect and restore the Baltimore Woods area, and prepare the land under the parking lot to become part of a native Oregon white oak prairie.

From Friends of Baltimore Woods:

Portland, Oregon, has a valuable yet little known natural resource that is in danger of being lost:

The 30-acre Baltimore Woods Connectivity Corridor fills a critical gap in the Willamette Greenway and regional 40-Mile Loop bicycling and walking trails, situated between Cathedral and Pier Parks in North Portland. This unique urban greenway, recognized for its special habitat value to plants and wildlife, faces threats from invasive species and development pressures that could eventually spoil its natural value. The Friends of Baltimore Woods is dedicated to preserving and restoring this corridor, and we encourage you to join us.
This remnant native woods features such trees as Oregon white oak, madrone, and broad-leaf maple and provides food and shelter for a variety of birds, mammals, and other species.

Restoring Baltimore Woods will:

• Improve the Willamette River watershed’s health by filtering storm runoff so pollutants are not carried into the river
• Keep a natural buffer between residential and industrial neighbors
• Provide excellent views of the Willamette River, St. Johns Bridge, Forest Park and the vibrant working harbor
• Enhance native habitat
• Offer trail users opportunities for recreation, education, and a natural experience for walkers and bicyclists, away from auto traffic

 For more information: friendsofbaltimorewoods.org or depave.org.

Cutting firs, saving oaks in Canemah

from the June 7, 2012 Oregonian

Over the next year, Metro will remove firs that are gradually crowding out a small patch of Oregon City oak savanna.

The restoration of a once-dominant, now-vanishing Willamette Valley habitat is a cornerstone of Metro's restoration effort at the Canemah Bluff natural area. The agency bought about 120 acres of forest land next to Oregon 99E about a mile south of downtown Oregon City.

Plans call for a looping trail system and an overlook providing views of the river and Willamette Falls. The work will be done next year.

"We're trying to balance restoration with recreation," said Brian Vaughn, a Metro senior natural resource scientist.

The Metro land is adjacent to Canemah Neighborhood Children's Park, which serves as the entry point to the trail system. Oregon City recently improved the park, which includes a playground and picnic area.

It is unlikely that anyone will stumble across Canemah Bluff and its eight-space parking lot. Getting there requires maneuvering narrow streets through a neighborhood that includes Civil War-era homes.

But Metro's efforts will certainly draw some attention.

About 150 firs will be removed this summer to improve the oak habitat. Firs grow faster and taller than oaks and crowd them out. Other trees will be topped or girdled and the snags left standing.

The 15-acre patch of white oak and grassland that remains will give visitors a view how the area looked in the mid-1800s, when the former town of Canemah was born and flourished.

"This is what the (early) settlers saw when they came through here," said Jonathan Soll, who oversees Metro's natural area restorations. "This is special."

Neighbors aren't happy with Metro's decision to cut the firs or the agency's refusal to add more visitor parking, said Howard Post, Canemah Neighborhood Association chairman.

"We have kind of a running battle" with Metro, Post said. Canemah residents support more trails but don't want the forest disturbed, he said.

Many in Canemah don't trust Metro. They blame the agency for excessive tree-cutting and for damage to a historic road a few years ago.

Metro owns about 160 acres south of the Canemah site. The two parcels are separated by privately owned land. If the private property comes on the market, Metro hopes to acquire it.

Camille Park oaks

Excerpted from the Beaverton Valley Times, April 19, 2012

Just east of Highway 217 and accessed by Southwest 105th Avenue or Marjorie Lane, Camille Park is a 12-acre oasis with amenities both the young and old can enjoy.   A 700-foot plastic-decked boardwalk system provides year-round wetlands access, which right now includes a lower-lying camas lily meadow that blooms in spring.

The park’s rare Oregon white oak habitat – one of the most endangered environments in the Pacific Northwest – was enhanced by thinning some fast-growing ash trees, opening the canopy and providing more light. A wetlands meadow was also replanted with native species, and invasive plants and shrubs were removed.

 

District Park Ranger Kyle Spinks said the restoration of native plants and the boardwalk through the park’s marshier areas should prove popular among nature lovers of all stripes.

“We sought to turn it into an interactive wetland/shrubland,” he noted. “The idea is you can walk in and see what (Oregon) wetlands are all about.”

Lonely Tree

Milwaukie, Oregon filmmakers highlight movie on Three Creeks Area

By Ellen Spitaleri - The Portland Tribune, Apr 9, 2012

Steve Berliner, director of the Friends of Kellogg & Mt. Scott Creeks Watershed, and Eric Shawn, work to protect the Three Creeks Nature Area recently vandalized by BMX riders. Police placed branches on the trail to try to discourage riders. Becca Quint / TRIBUNE FILE PHOTO

Forget the red carpet treatment.  Two local filmmakers think a green carpet would be more appropriate for the first showing of their movie, “Lonely Tree,” part of Milwaukie’s Watershed Event, on Friday, April 13, at the Masonic Hall in downtown Milwaukie.

The film’s title is actually, “Lonely Tree — Old Growth in Peril at 3-Creeks,” noted Greg Baartz-Bowman, the director and editor, and the producer, along with cinematographer Mark Gamba, both Milwaukie residents.

“If we keep cutting down all the trees,” like the Oregon white oaks at the Three-Creeks Natural Area near the North Clackamas Aquatic Park, “then all we will have are lonely white oaks spread around the county, like the one oak tree at the roundabout that is all by itself,” Baartz-Bowman added.

The event will also showcase three other films: “Greatest Migration,” by Andy Maser, which follows the wild salmon as they travel into Idaho; “Trout on the Wind,” by Sam Drevo, a dam-removal film about Trout Creek on the Wind River in Washington state; and “Of Forest and Men,” a United Nations film, culled from a larger film called “Home,” that is narrated by actor Edward Burns.

The point of all four films is that “watersheds and forests need each other to survive,” Gamba noted.

MUST takes action

Milwaukie’s Watershed Event is co-hosted by MUST — Milwaukie Understands Sustainable Transitions — an organization founded by Gamba, a member of the city’s planning commission and a professional, internationally known photographer, who has worked for The National Geographic.

“I decided to get together a group of people more forward thinking and more sustainably minded, to be a voice to the City Council,” he said.

Baartz-Bowman, a MUST member as well, has been employed in the film industry in Los Angeles, working on screenplays, feature films and corporate training films for Logolite Entertainment. He and his family moved to Milwaukie in 2007, and he founded Straw Bale Films in 2011, because he wanted to establish a film company in Clackamas County that would focus on sustainable practices and environmental concerns.

The film is completely self-financed, Baartz-Bowman noted, and Milwaukie’s Watershed Event is free. Seating is limited, but if there is enough demand to see “Lonely Tree,” another showing may be arranged, he said.

Trees in peril

The two men decided to make “Lonely Tree,” as they became aware of the Sunnybrook Boulevard Extension project, a proposed less-than-one-mile road from the intersection of 82nd Avenue and Sunnybrook, cutting through the natural area behind the Clackamas Community College Harmony Campus and the North Clackamas Aquatic Park. 

The county wants to build the road to give increased access to the college campus and to push traffic onto Harmony Road. To do that, many of the 200-year-old oak trees and surrounding vegetation would have to be cut down.

Baartz-Bowman said he first became aware of the Three-Creeks Natural Area through reading news stories, and then took a tour of the area.

“There is a legacy oak forest in my backyard. When I went out there and saw how beautiful the trees are, I decided the best way to stop the road was to make a film. Those trees are so special, and when I saw how much we have neglected and abused them, I had no choice,” he said.

Gamba also toured the Three-Creeks area, and called it “an amazing little piece of original Willamette Valley habitat.”

He is generally opposed to spending money to build roads, and pointed out that we cannot continue to burn the amount of carbon fuel that we do today, not to mention how much we will burn in the future.

There is a very real chance oil resources will be totally depleted, and the county is proposing to cut down 200- to 300-year-old trees to build a road that will only be good for two decades at most, Gamba said.

‘Rare pockets’

The two men spent more than 100 hours of their spare time making “Lonely Tree,” which Baartz-Bowman called an “advocacy documentary.” The overall goal of the film is to acquaint the audience with the road project, which was shelved in May 2011, but could return.

The two men hope that people will contact the county commissioners and ask them to keep the Sunnybrook Extension permanently off the table.

Books have been written as to why it is imperative to preserve dwindling natural areas within urban areas, Gamba said.

“Studies show that people in cities value nature, parks, green areas,” he said. “Those are rare pockets these days. To build a road to nowhere through one of the last remaining green spaces is ridiculous.”

Baartz-Bowman pointed out that the state has less than 1 percent of legacy white oaks left, and “we need to maintain our native landscape to save it for us and future generations — we have to take positive action, or it will be gone.”

It is ironic, he pointed out, that Metro is spending millions to recreate natural areas, “when here in Clackamas County we already own an oak forest. And it is in the watershed, important to drinking water, clean water and fish. The ultimate goal is to create a wildlife sanctuary, and getting the road off the books is the first step.”

A local band called The Old Light provided some of the music for the film’s soundtrack. The title song, “Lonely Tree,” was written and recorded by Baartz-Bowman’s younger brother 20 years ago.

“He was in a reggae band called The Ravers, and he wrote and sang a song called ‘Lonely Tree.’ The lyrics are: ‘There stands a lonely tree where a forest used to be. Can you tell me what can we do?’ Now, with this film, I feel like I have answered his question,” Baartz-Bowman said.

Magic of nature

Hundreds of words have been written about the Three-Creeks Natural Area, but both men noted that they experienced something that goes beyond mere description as they interacted with the site.

“I had a magic moment when I stumbled on two deer that did not run away. They wanted to be filmed — it was special. I felt honored,” Baartz-Bowman said.

“Nature enters you in a way it doesn’t when I am on a sidewalk. Ways you can’t predict — suddenly you are different, in a good way.”

“It is the same thing I have experienced in other groves of old growth — something not discernible by eyes, ears or nose. The best word is magic. Old growth everywhere has a power that you have to experience. Three-Creeks is somewhat diminished, but the old trees are still there,” Gamba said.

Audience members will see many familiar residents voicing their opinions about Three-Creeks, the two men said, including Chris Runyard, the head of the Tsunami Crew, a group of volunteers dedicated to the preservation of the site.

Others include: Metro Councilor Carlotta Collette, an Ardenwald resident; former Milwaukie City Council member, Deborah Barnes; Milwaukie Mayor, Jeremy Ferguson; Jim Labbe, an urban conservationist with the Audubon Society of Portland; many Clackamas County residents; Tsunami Crew members and more.

Shaun Lowcock, a Milwaukie resident, helped with the production of the film and provided the narration, Baartz-Bowman said.

‘Un-Dam-It’

Baartz-Bowman and Gamba are now hard at work on the next project for Straw Bale Films, “Un-Dam-It,” another advocacy documentary, designed to make the removal of the dam at the mouth of Kellogg Creek a high priority. The city has $1 million from the federal government earmarked for the project, but Gamba estimates that the overall cost would be closer to $4 million.

“The big holdout is all the sediment around the dam is heavily polluted, with DDT and more. That needs to be removed and/or treated, and that will cost an estimated $2.5 million,” he said.

Dam removal is critical for fish passage, he noted, saying that the Willamette River has almost no spawning grounds left, and Kellogg Creek was a big one in the past, with tens of thousands of salmon going up the creek.

Based on old records, the two men said that as many as 30,000 salmon could return to the creek, once the dam is removed. They noted also, that this could be a big tourist draw for Milwaukie; if the dam were removed, people could ride Milwaukie Max to the site, stand on the bridge and watch an enormous salmon run.

Gamba added: “My goal is to see that dam come out during or just following the construction of light-rail’s Kellogg Bridge.”

See the film

Straw Bale Films and MUST present Milwaukie’s Watershed Event

Doors open at 7 p.m. on April 13

Venue: Milwaukie Masonic Lodge, 10636 S.E. Main St.

The event is free, but seating is limited, so patrons must RSVP to info@strawbalefilms.com.

To see a clip of “Lonely Tree — Old Growth in Peril at 3-Creeks,” visit www.strawbalefilms.com.

How to stop spread of Sudden Oak Death

From Oregon State University Extension Service:

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A newly updated publication outlines how the public can help stop the spread of a disease that has killed more than a million oak and tanoak trees in 14 coastal counties in California and thousands of tanoaks in Curry County, Ore.

"Stop the Spread of Sudden Oak Death" (EC1608) is available for free online.
Sudden Oak Death is the common name for the disease caused by a pathogen, Phytophthora ramorum.

"No one knows where the pathogen came from or how it was introduced in Oregon," said Dave Shaw, an Oregon State University plant pathologist. He and Ellen Goheen, plant pathologist with the U.S. Forest Service, are authors of the publication.

Other hosts for the disease are California black oak, Douglas-fir, grand fir, coast redwood, Pacific madrone, Pacific rhododendron, evergreen huckleberry, and many other tree and shrub species common in Oregon and Washington forests. The disease also causes branch and shoot dieback and leaf spotting on a large number of woodland and nursery plant species.

Hosts in the nursery trade include varieties of rhododendron, camellia and Pieris. A complete host list is on the USDA-APHIS website.

P. ramorum spreads naturally when mist and rain move spores within forest canopies – from treetops to stems and shrubs below, or across landscapes from treetop to treetop.

"Humans help spread the disease when they transport infected plants, plant parts or infested soil," Shaw said. "State and federal inspectors survey forests and nurseries in Oregon regularly to detect the disease. Infected plants and adjacent host plants are destroyed to slow spread of the disease."

State and federal quarantine regulations minimize the risk of new infections and prevent human-assisted spread. Complete texts of these regulations (ORS 603-052-1230 and 7 CFR 301.92) are on the Oregon Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Agriculture websites.

People can spread Phytophthora ramorum across long distances by moving infected plants either purchased at a nursery or collected in the wild, or by moving infected wood, leaves, stems or soil.

The authors say there are things persons living, working, or visiting in the quarantined portion (map printed in publication) of Oregon's Curry County can do to help stop the spread. These include:

• Become familiar with the most recent regulations on Sudden Oak Death (websites in publication).
• Do not collect and remove host plants or plant parts from the forest.
• Do not collect or remove soil.
• Stay on established trails and respect trail closures.
• Before leaving infested areas, clean and disinfect equipment such as saws, shovels and pruning equipment you used in infested areas; wash soil off tires, wheel wells and the undercarriage of your vehicle; clean soil off shoes, mountain bikes, horse hooves and pet paws.
• For best protection, use a 10-percent bleach solution for cleaning.
• Buy healthy plants from reputable nurseries.

For more information, contact the OSU Extension foresters in local county offices, or a forester working with a state or federal agency.

OSU Extension, Curry County, 29390 Ellensburg (Hwy 101), Gold Beach, OR 97444, 541-247-6672 or 1-800-356-3986

Oregon Department of Forestry
USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Region

Author: Judy Scott

Source: Dave Shaw