Saving The Douglas Fir Tree

A deadly pest may lurk somewhere in east Asia, an insect or a fungus that could decimate the Pacific Northwest's vast forests of Douglas fir should it ever reach this region's shores.

The possibility terrifies forest biologists, who say the demise of the venerable species would devastate the region's ecosystem and forever change its economy, culture and politics.

That's why an international scientific team plans to ship 1,000 Douglas fir seeds to northeastern China. They will try to document what foreign pests, if any, are attracted to the species - pests that hide deep in the wood and are not detectable by the naked eye.

"If there is a monster out there and we know what it is, we can devise very specific programs to screen for it and eradicate it," said Bill Denison, a retired plant pathologist from Oregon State University and board member of the nonprofit Willamette Institute for Biological Control, which is organizing the project.

"There is no tree in the Western hemisphere that is of greater economic importance than the Douglas fir. It's unimaginable what would happen to the economy and the politics of the Pacific Northwest if we were to lose that species," Denison said.

Once the seeds arrive in China's Shandong Province, they will be raised by employees of Yantai Taxus, a company that specializes in growing yew trees for medicine.

The trees will be planted in groupings of 100 trees or more at different locations in the province, which shares the Pacific Northwest's mild climate. Chinese forestry experts will visit the trees several times a year, looking for any sign of disease and documenting which pests afflict them.

The fear of a devastating insect or fungus is more than hypothetical. Two important sources of northeastern hardwood, the American sweet chestnut and American elm, were wiped out in the early 1900s by fungi that reached this country from east Asia. In recent years, the Dutch elm was decimated by another blight from the region.

A similar crisis for Douglas fir could mean dramatic changes in the Northwest and beyond.

About 70 percent of all trees harvested in Oregon and Washington - nearly 4.7 billion board feet (26.6 million cubic meters) - are Douglas fir. About 90 percent of the region's forests are made up of the firs, meaning their loss would effectively end forest recreation, denude the landscape and threaten sensitive species such as wild salmon.

"If you took out all of the Douglas fir trees in the Pacific Northwest, there would be nothing that anyone recognized as old growth forest," Denison said. "If something happens like what happened to the chestnut or the Dutch elm, the issue of the preservation of old growth forests is history - they'll all be gone."

A serious blight could also spell the end of the Christmas tree industry in the Pacific Northwest.

Oregon and Washington are the No. 1 and No. 4 growers of Christmas trees, respectively, and about 45 percent of those trees are Douglas firs, according to the Pacific Northwest Christmas Tree Association.

The states' Christmas tree crop in 2001 had a combined value of more than $208 million, according to the association's Web site.

Most of the region's Douglas firs are shipped to the Southwest, Denison said, while East Coast trees mostly come from Michigan, Wisconsin and Canada.

"If (the pest) was something that was a defoliator, that just took the needles off the tree but didn't kill the wood, even that would hit the Christmas tree industry hard," he said.

China exports a tiny amount of raw timber - about two-tenths of 1 percent of the harvest in Oregon and Washington alone - but imported 2.7 billion board feet (15.3 million cubic meters) in 2001.

The owner of Yantai Taxus, Robinson Xie, said he has long been interested in conserving wild yew trees and sees the benefit of protecting other species - even in foreign countries.

"I think it's a very important project. It's important to protect American trees, too," Xie said.

Xie, who is acting as a liaison with the Chinese government, said government officials there support the project and hope it will eventually bolster their timber trade.

It will be 10 or 20 years before the institute's experiment will begin to yield solid results, said Jerry Rust, institute board member and liaison with the project's Chinese leader. In the meantime, the team is exploring developing similar plantations in Siberia, eastern Russia and South Korea, he said.

American scientists are particularly concerned that imports of untreated larch or larch byproducts from Siberia could bring pests to Oregon and Washington forests. Imports of untreated raw larch logs were banned in 1991, Denison said, but bugs or fungus can still travel in packing and other wood products.

Denison said he believes the experiment's simplicity and low cost will help it succeed in China and beyond.

"It isn't going to take a lot of money. We're not talking about plantations that have to be thinned and heavy equipment to harvest them," he said. "We're talking about 100 or so trees in one place and watering them and then taking a look at them a couple of times a year."