Scientists and conservationists have warned that a little known, but lethal, disease is destroying trees and doing massive damage to Australia’s ecosystem.
Ginger bark syndrome, which appears in drought stressed gum trees, is ravaging forests in Tasmania and has also hit Western Australia.
Huge patches of forest in the island state are turning brown and dying, which Dr Tim Wardlaw from the University of Tasmania first observed in 2013 when he worked with Forestry Tasmania.
‘During routine inspections, we found a lot of the trees in their plantations along northern Tasmania had ginger stems, sort of a red stain on the stems,’ he told Daily Mail Australia.
‘And when we looked more closely at those a sample of those trees – we cut them down and dissected them – and instead of just the limited gum veins, they had big pockets of gum just underneath the bark.
‘The best explanation of that was the very hot weather we had that year triggered thestems to think they were suffering damage and they basically have this big response to wounding …
‘And that bleeds out and gives the wood that characteristic red colour,’ he said.
Dr Wardlaw said while the problem has more to do with high temperatures than a lack of water getting to the trees, ‘they tend to go hand in hand, so we had a big episode of mortality’.
Scientists have warned a little known, but lethal, disease called ginger bark syndrome (pictured) is destroying trees and doing massive damage to Australia’s ecosystem
Though Dr Wardlaw first observed the condition in northern Tasmania, a prolonged drought means the south of the state is now also affected.
Conservationist and bush regenerator Sean Tooker was driving in the Huon Valley when he saw ‘great large patches of trees that appeared to have just died’.
It was ‘almost like a suicide of trees of all ages, saplings right through to old trees and other pockets,’ he told ABC radio.
‘I was looking at trees I’ve seen for decades. Big, beautiful, old Tasmanian blue gums, all bleeding. They’ve been stained by their sap.’
Dr Wardlaw said ‘autumn was very dry and it’s been much warmer than normal’.
‘They basically form air bubbles in the xylem, the water transport (in the trees) and those air bubbles when they fall in response to drought water transport, that’s when the trees start to die.’
He said wet forests were originally thought to be immune to most of the climate impacts because they very rarely have drought.
But that has not turned out to be the case and in fact they’re ‘very sensitive to warming temperatures’, Dr Wardlaw said.
Forest ecologist Dr Jennifer Sanger said the ecosystem ‘may not bounce back.
‘Most people very used to seeing trees impacted by fire. And when a fire comes through, a lot of species can spring back and grow back,’ she said.
Dr Sanger said a lot of people ‘are assuming that this will happen after this drought event (in southern Tasmania)’.
Ginger bark syndrome (pictured), which appears in drought stressed gum trees, is ravaging forests in Tasmania and has also hit Western Australia
Dr Tim Wardlaw (pictured) from the University of Tasmania first observed in 2013 when he was worked with Forestry Tasmania
‘But that’s not the case because of the internal cavities of these trees are kind of crumpled, they are not able to recover from drought stress like this, which is very unfortunate,’ he said.
She pointed out that Western Australia has also been affected.
‘They’ve been really badly hit over quite a wide amount of coastline and in some areas it’s been so severe that ecologists have described it as ecosystem collapse.
‘So there will be some plants that grow back, but it’s probably going to be a very different mix of species to what’s currently there,’ Dr Sanger said.
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