Tanoak Target: The Rise and Fall of Herbicide Use on a Common Native Tree

Abstract

Despite over a century of conservation efforts and scientific forest management, a keystone nut tree common to California and southwestern Oregon is threatened by the 1995 introduction of an exotic disease. This is after decades of overharvesting of bark for industrial tanning beginning with American settlement, then of a full-scale tanoak eradication campaign by the mid-1900s. In addition to herbicide use, twentieth-century fire suppression favored conifers over tanoak. This article explores the limits and failures of governmental regulation to reverse devastating assaults on tanoak by examining the interplay of economic, ecological, and cultural factors that informed use and abuse.