Team works to map disease killing thousands of Hawaii trees

HILO, Hawaii (AP) - A field crew is working to track the rapid ohia death fungal disease that has killed thousands of trees in Hawaii.

The team from the Big Island Invasive Species Committee visited the Hilo Forest Reserve on Wednesday to see an area that is considered a high priority in the team’s mapping efforts, the Hawaii Tribune-Herald reported (https://bit.ly/2soUVFo). Mapping is the first step toward understanding and eliminating rapid ohia death, the team said.

The disease has stretched over about 75,000 acres of endemic ohia trees, according to the report. The disease has killed more than 200,000 ohia trees in the past two years, researchers said.

Once infected, the fungus spreads through the trees’ vascular systems and cuts off access to nutrients and water. Symptoms can take months to manifest, and they can kill trees in a matter of weeks once they do, researchers said.

The crew began its efforts in January. Before that, it focused primarily on efforts to eliminate invasive albizia trees. Now the team devotes about 75 percent of its time to the fungal disease.

“For me, it feels really good that we’re doing rapid ohia death things now,” said field technician Jensen Walker, who was born and raised on the Big Island. The ohia is “so important in Hawaiian culture.”

The samples taken on Wednesday all tested negative for the fungus via the crew’s remote lab. The results will be confirmed by a month.

The crew will need to return to the site again to be sure, project leader Bill Buckley said.

“You can miss it, if it (the infection site) is higher up in the canopy and hasn’t (traveled) down yet,” said J.B. Friday, an extension forester with the University of Hawaii. “If it were just a small infection, maybe it would take a lot longer. Maybe it would take a year or two to infect the whole tree.”

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Information from: Hawaii Tribune-Herald, https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/