Phytophthora ramorum
Detection of "P. ramorum" in watercourses has emerged as the earliest of early detection methods. This technique employs pear or rhododendron baits suspended in the watercourse using ropes, buckets, mesh bags, or other similar devices. If plants in the watershed are infected with "P. ramorum", zoospores of the pathogen (as well as other "Phytophthora" spp.) are likely present in adjacent waterways. Under conducive weather conditions, the zoospores are attracted to the baits and infect them, causing lesions that can be isolated to culture the pathogen or analyzed via PCR assay. This method has detected "P. ramorum" at scales ranging from small, intermittent seasonal drainages to the Garcia, Chetco, and South Fork Eel Rivers in California and Oregon (144, 352, and 689 mi2 drainage areas, respectively). It can detect the existence of infected plants in watersheds before any mortality from the infections becomes evident. Of course, it cannot detect the exact locations of those infected plants: at the first sign of "P. ramorum" propagules in the stream, crews must scour the watershed using all available means to find symptomatic vegetation.
Phytophthora ramorum
The course that "P. ramorum" management should take depends on a number of factors, including the scale of the landscape upon which one hopes to manage it. Management of "P. ramorum" has been undertaken at the landscape/ regional level in Oregon in the form of a campaign to completely eradicate the pathogen from the forests in which it has been found (mostly private, but also USDA Forest Service and USDI Bureau of Land Management ownership). The eradication campaign involves vigorous early detection by airplane and watercourse monitoring, a U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA APHIS) and Oregon Department of Agriculture-led quarantine to prevent movement of host materials out of the area where infected trees are found, and immediate removal of "P. ramorum" host vegetation, symptomatic or not, within a buffer around each infected tree.