The Killing Fields

Marin is ground zero to in the fight to save California’s signature oaks

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Kent Julin remembers the day in 1998 when he first realized something truly unusual was happening in Marin County.

He was driving near his home in Woodacre when he saw a completely brown coast live oak tree. Julin, a battalion chief with the Marin County Fire Department and a native of Marin, had heard of a strange new tree killer known as Sudden Oak Death, but most people at the time thought it was a bug problem confined to a limited area.

When he saw the dead oak, though, he did a double take. “It was like a librarian walking by a bookshelf and there’s a book missing,” says Julin, who is also a professional forester and has done everything from vegetation management and archaeological studies to environmental research in Alaska. “I thought, ‘Something is wrong here.’”

It was the beginning of a decade-long battle against a disease that began in Marin and has leaped from one coastal city to the next all the way to Oregon, laying waste to the signature tree that graces California’s golden hills.

Julin can now see dozens of dead and dying oak trees as he drives through the picturesque countryside of West Marin. “See that hillside?” he asks, pointing to a grass-covered slope covered partly by green oak woodlands. “In the next ten years most of those coast live oaks will be dead.”

So far, Sudden Oak Death exists in forests and wildlands only in 14 California and Oregon counties, but the potential—indeed, the likelihood—of its spread is real. The pathogen behind the disease has been detected in nurseries and garden stores in 21 U.S. states, in British Columbia and throughout Europe. It has also been found in natural areas in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany and Ireland.

Sudden Oak Death is now known to have 107 susceptible host plants, including such common garden ornamentals as camellias and rhododendrons. In some woodland areas, virtually every tree—oak, bay, madrone—is infected. Most hosts survive, but do suffer some form of wilting. In redwood trees, for instance, the disease causes some sprouts at the base of the tree to turn brown.
Tan oak, coast live oak and black oak trees are clearly the most susceptible (white oaks are not). Tens of thousands of oaks have already died in Marin and neighboring counties; more than a million trees have died overall.

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