WIMBERLEY – At Blue Hole Regional Park, the city of Wimberley is working to remove oak wilt — one of the most destructive tree diseases.
The disease has killed more than one million trees in 76 Central Texas counties, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service. Oak wilt is an infectious vascular disease caused by the Bretziella fagacearum fungus, which invades and disables the water conducting system in susceptible trees.
On Dec. 1, Wimberley City Council approved an amendment to the 2022-23 operating budget for $15,000 to remedy oak wilt at Blue Hole Regional Park. After a recommendation by Parks and Recreation director Richard Shaver, $100,000 was also allocated for a new parks master plan.
“We just had a really good Samaritan, who is an employee of the Texas A&M Forest Service, just driving down [FM] 3237,” Shaver said. “[He] was looking at our trees from his car and set up a meeting with us; we walked down to the area and he was able to diagnose it as oak wilt.”
Shaver said the most effective way to remedy oak wilt is to isolate the diseased trees, let them die and not affect any of the other oak trees in an area.
“Some ways that people have done this is they can inject trees with a chemical that would possibly save them but would stop the disease from moving forward,” Shaver said. “But the method we decided to go with is a trenching method … If a tree is touching another oak tree, the disease can spread from one to another.”
The trenching method involves pruning the diseased trees back from the healthy trees, Shaver explained, and a trencher physically isolates one area from the other.
“We are fortunate where we found it so we can create a semicircle connecting from FM 3237 onto the other side of the park and isolate that way,” Shaver said.
New oak wilt centers are started when a contaminated beetle finds a fresh wound on a healthy oak tree, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service. The best time to prune to prevent an oak wilt infection is in summer and winter, when the beetle populations are the lowest and fungal mats are least likely to form.
Shaver said the staff is collecting quotes from contractors to take care of the service.
