Our ongoing project with East Bay Municipal Utility District to put our native fungi to work speeding up the remediation of recently-cut Eucalyptus trees.

In late 2020 we began working with East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) to investigate the use of fungi as a means to control the regrowth of cut Blue Gum Eucalyptus trees. Blue Gum trees were imported from Australia in the late 1800’s and widely planted in California. They have become naturalized in many places and can become invasive. On EBMUD property there are several stands of Blue Gum that pose windfall and fire hazards, so they must be periodically thinned. Typically, trees that are cut will continue to re-sprout from their stumps for up to 10 years. This can be mitigated by using herbicides like Triclopyr, however since EBMUD is managing watershed land, there are strict regulations that prevent the use of chemical herbicides. Their strategy has been to bring in teams to manually remove the re-growth once per year until the tree dies. Bay Area Applied Mycology has worked with EBMUD in the past to inoculate trees with Trametes versicolor, and the results were promising, however they were entirely anecdotal. In our current study, we wanted to be able to track the results and generate relevant data to establish whether inoculating Blue Gum with fungi significantly reduces the length of time these stumps will re-sprout.

Currently we are working with stumps spread out over 2 plots along Grizzly Peak Boulevard. Over the course of our 3 year study, we will visit our plots twice per year at 6 month intervals and record the weight of re-growth from stumps in experimental and control populations. We will look for any significant differences in both the weight of material removed, and the time until no regrowth is observed. We plan on expanding our study to include different fungal species and different tree species in the future.

We are always looking for volunteers to help with our current and future efforts.