HONOLULU Another detection of rapid ohia death has been made on Oahu, bringing the number of detections of the disease to four on the island.
HONOLULU — Another detection of rapid ohia death has been made on Oahu, bringing the number of detections of the disease to four on the island.
Caused by two varieties of fungal pathogens, ROD kills Hawaii’s native ohia trees, and was first identified on Hawaii Island in 2014. Since then, it’s spread to Oahu, Maui and Kauai.
ROD was first discovered on Kauai in 2018, first in the Moloa‘a State Forest Reserve. By the end of 2018, the disease was detected in three more locations on Kauai, and more detections were made in early 2019.
Those locations were at elevations ranging from 550 to 1,600 feet, according to the Kauai Invasive Species Committee, and in different forest types.
As more detections of ROD pop up, conservationists and state officials have teamed up to help combat the disease through digital mobile sketch mapping and drone imagery, taking wood samples and performing lab tests to detect the presence of the pathogen.
This latest Oahu detection — one tree in the the Moanalua Section of the Honolulu Watershed Forest Reserve above Tripler Army Medical Center — was made through an aerial survey of about 20,000 acres of forest on Oahu.
