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FRANKFORT,
Ky. — Agriculture Commissioner Richie Farmer
has asked United States Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman
to place additional restrictions on plant life coming
from California into Kentucky in an effort to ward off
Sudden Oak Death.
Commissioner
Farmer issued a Plant Quarantine in March banning importation
of nursery stock from California. The Commissioner took
action after the pathogen that causes Sudden Oak Death
(SOD) was discovered in camellias and traced back to
a large-scale nursery outside a 12-county area in northern
California where SOD was believed to have been contained.
The U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
(APHIS) subsequently issued a Federal Quarantine regulating
interstate movement of known host plants and associated
host plants of the SOD pathogen from California. The
APHIS order superseded Commissioner Farmer's March order
and was not as stringent as the Kentucky ban.
“The
state of Kentucky, due to its favorable climate, plant
diversity, and large oak forest population, is at an
extremely high risk for introduction and establishment
of P. ramorum [the
SOD pathogen] and would be adversely impacted by SOD
if it were to become established,” Commissioner Farmer
wrote in a letter to Secretary Veneman. “The impact
of P. ramorum cuts across a wide spectrum
of Kentucky interests, including horticulture, forestry,
urban/suburban neighborhoods, and wildlands.”
Commissioner
Farmer pointed out that the known host plant list for
P. ramorum has grown from three in 2000 to
59 in early 2004. “There are too many species of plants
that have not been tested by USDA to verify that this
is the total number of host plants,” the Commissioner
stated. “Only after each individual plant, along
with the plant material, has tested negative for SOD
will plants from California be allowed entry into Kentucky.”
The Commissioner also noted that the pathogen escaped
the 12-county confinement area in California “despite
a variety of regulatory and control techniques.”
Sudden
Oak Death was first identified in this country in California
in 1995 and is blamed for killing tens of thousands
of oaks there. There are no known cases of Sudden Oak
Death in Kentucky.
Oak
accounts for 50 to 60 percent of all Kentucky timber
revenue, according to the state Division of Forestry.
White oak and red oak are two of the top three species
produced in the state. Kentucky's forest industries
employ 30,000 people.
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