Oaks Are Dying At Record Rates Across Chesapeake Region

It’s not your imagination. Those beautiful mature oaks are dying, along the road, in forests, perhaps even in your yard — at an accelerating rate.

Reports of mature, seemingly healthy trees suddenly becoming leafless and dropping dead branches are flooding into the offices of local officials and state forestry agencies in Chesapeake Bay drainage states. Forest inventories show the oaks are declining in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland.

In Anne Arundel County, MD, county officials received so many phone calls about dying oaks that they have begun investigating where and why so many ar...