Expert warns of dieback disaster

WA was on the brink of an environmental disaster because successive Federal and State governments had failed to prevent dieback from killing vast chunks of forest, a leading academic warned yesterday.

Giles Hardy, of Murdoch University's Centre for Phytophthora Research and Management, said that hundreds of thousands of hectares of land were probably infested already.

The World Wide Fund for Nature has predicted that the disease, which spreads through soil and water or root-to-root contact, could cost Australia $1.6 billion in the next decade by damaging the forestry, agriculture and tourism industries.

Most of the loss would be felt in WA because the South-West is the worst affected region in the country.

The fund said it estimated that at least $43.6 million was needed to manage dieback in the South- West over the next decade and it is known many South-West national parks are heavily infested, including 75 per cent of the Stirling Ranges and 20 per cent of all jarrah forests.

Fifty per cent of WA's declared rare flora is susceptible to dieback.

Dieback can move a metre a year uphill through soil but in wet, warm conditions as experienced on the south coast this spring, it can travel hundreds of metres in a couple of weeks - leading to predictions this will be a horror year.

There is no known way of eradicating the organism, thought to have been brought to WA by early Europeans on fruit trees.

It kills plants by moving into their roots to feed on nutrients, taking the plant's own food and causing it to die in a few weeks.

Key fl ora for WA animals, including banksias, peas and hibbertias, are affected, meaning many nectar-feeding birds and mammals such as honey possums and the rare and threatened woylie, dibbler, mardo and Gilbert's potoroo are also considered at risk.

Dr Hardy said that in some ways dieback was a worse problem than salinity, which attracted government funding because it affected agriculture more directly. But he was convinced that with enough resources it would be possible to beat dieback. 'What we really need is $12-$15 million over the next 10 years to have six senior researchers look at chemical control, genetics and host pathogen interactions,' he said.

ELOISE DORTCH
Story by:The Western Australian