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Position Paper 

Transport, Disposal, and Use of Woody Material
Infested with the Pine Pitch Canker Fungus

Note: The practices described herein are key to the implementation of the Board of Forestry’s Zone of Infestation.

Counties with infestations of pine pitch canker include Alameda, Contra Costa, Los Angeles, Marin, Monterey, Mendocino, Orange, San Benito, San Diego, San Francisco, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, and Sonoma. Infestations may be localized or widespread depending upon the county. Know if you are in an infested area. If you are unsure, assume you are within an infested area whenever working with pine within an infested county. Most pines and Douglas-fir are susceptible to the disease, although the disease is most likely to be encountered in either Monterey or Bishop pines. In order to reduce the spread of pitch canker to uninfested areas, The Pine Pitch Canker Task Force recommends the following actions within infested areas:

TREE PRUNING AND CUTTING

• Tools and machinery which are used to prune, cut, or chip trees with pine pitch canker disease should be cleaned and sterilized before use on uninfected trees or in uninfested areas. Lysol™ or a 10% solution of bleach (1 part household bleach in 9 parts water) are effective sterilants. A logical alternative to repeated cleaning of equipment is to reserve one set of equipment for use only in infested areas and another set for use only in uninfested areas.
• Limbs and small pieces of wood from diseased trees may be chipped and the mulch deposited on site or they may be burned. Any material that is removed from the site should be tightly covered with a tarp during transit and taken to the nearest landfill or designated disposal facility for prompt burial, chipping and composting, or burning. Do not transport diseased wood out of infested counties.
• Logs from diseased trees may be split for firewood for local use, but the wood should be seasoned beneath a tightly sealed, clear plastic tarp to prevent the buildup of destructive insects. California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection TREE NOTE #3, Controlling Bark Beetles in Wood Residue and Firewood, provides specific guidelines for firewood tarping. Do not stack pine firewood next to living pine trees or transport it to uninfested counties.

FIREWOOD

• Do not transport pine firewood out of infested counties. If you are traveling from an infested area to camp elsewhere, take another type of firewood with you, such as oak or cedar, or purchase firewood at your destination.
• If you are camping within an infested county, use up or leave behind any pine firewood you have with you. This should be done even if you brought the firewood with you from an uninfested county.

CHRISTMAS TREES

• Individuals are advised not to transport Monterey pine Christmas trees out of infested counties. Purchase and use trees locally; dispose of Monterey pine Christmas trees locally.
• Preferred methods of disposal include:

  • dispose of the tree promptly through a local recycling program, or
  • dispose at a local landfill which either buries or composts green waste, or
  • chip the tree and compost the chips or use them as a mulch around your home.

SEEDS

• Seeds collected in pitch canker infested areas may carry the pathogen, even if they are taken from cones on apparently healthy trees. Pine seeds should not be transported out of pitch canker infested areas.

CHIPS

• Unless the chips have been composted, do not transport pine chips out of infested counties. Composting chips prior to transport should greatly reduce or eliminate the potential for disease spread.
• Within infested areas, the use of infected chips for mulch would contribute little to the total number of sources of the disease. However, it is best to use chips near the site of origin as it will minimize dispersal of the pathogen to uninfested areas within an infested county. Avoid using potentially infested chips near healthy pines or Douglas-fir.

LOGS

• Do not transport pine logs with intact bark out of infested counties, unless you are positive the logs originated from an uninfested area. Removing all bark prior to transport should greatly reduce the potential for disease spread, as would prompt milling of the logs.
• Pine bark should not be transported out of infested counties. Handling, disposal and use is the same as for other pine green waste.

OTHER

• Any untreated pine material that originates within infested counties is a potential source of pine pitch canker disease, unless the material has been treated to eliminate the disease or has been certified to be disease-free.
  

BACKGROUND

Pine pitch canker is a fungal disease that infects many species of pine trees. It infects Monterey pine Christmas trees and has been found in ornamental Douglas-fir at one location in Santa Cruz County. First discovered in California in 1986, its range is spreading and now includes 16 coastal and adjacent inland counties from Mendocino to San Diego. There is no cure and thousands of Monterey and Bishop pine trees have been killed.

Bark beetles, which carry the fungus, primarily infest Monterey and Bishop pines but also feed and breed on inland forest trees such as ponderosa pine. As yet, the disease has not been found in the Sierra Nevada or other heavily forested parts of the state.

Transport, disposal and use of diseased material should be done so as not to spread the disease to uninfested areas. Insects spread the disease locally, but people are responsible for long-distance spread. Pine firewood, logs, chips, branches, needles, cones, and trees may all be a source of the disease.

University of California scientists are currently doing studies to characterize the survival of the pitch canker fungus, Fusarium subglutinans f.sp. pini and associated insects in pine green waste, but the full results are not yet in. The fungus can survive in cut wood up to a year. The fungus also survives in soil up to 8 weeks or more. Insects may survive in cut wood or chips for many months. Chipping does not eliminate insects. When branch tips infested with twig beetles are chipped, some insects may emerge up to 12 weeks after chipping. Undoubtedly, some insects will survive even longer in chipped material. All of these findings implicate pine green waste as a viable source for the spread of pine pitch canker disease.

Last edited November 04, 2001

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