Imports of ash trees to be banned
Imports of ash trees are to be banned from today in an attempt to stop the spread of a disease which has devastated them in Europe.
Environment Secretary Owen Paterson said on Saturday he was “ready to go” with legislation to ban ash imports which have been blamed for introducing the Chalara fraxinea fungus to the UK.
The fungus, which causes leaf loss and crown dieback and can lead to tree death, has wiped out 90% of ash trees in Denmark in just seven years and is becoming widespread throughout central Europe.
Ash dieback was previously identified in nurseries and recently planted sites including a car park, a college campus and a new woodland, but has now been found in the wider environment at sites in East Anglia, increasing fears it could wreak the same kind of damage as Dutch elm disease in the 1970s.
Professor Ian Boyd, chief scientific adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, warned the disease could be disastrous for Britain’s ash trees and have dire ecological consequences.
Prof Boyd, who heads a Government task-force battling the crisis, told BBC Radio 4 that there was a possibility Britain’s ash trees had developed a resistance to the disease, but that was a theory as yet unproven.
He said: “Ecologically it is going to change the countryside very significantly. Parallels have been made with Dutch elm disease of the 1970s. This is not good.”
In the UK, ash trees make up around 30% of the wooded landscape, across woodlands, hedgerows and parks.
Mr Paterson said on Saturday:
“I will bring in a ban on Monday, having discussed this over the weekend with officials and experts. I have already prepared the legislation and we are ready to go. The evidence is clearly there. There will be a ban on Monday.”
The president of the Country Land and Business Association, Harry Cotterell, welcomed the ban but said it may not be enough to stop an epidemic. “We are very pleased to hear that the ban is going to be announced on Monday,” he said. “I think the real concern is that, geographically, it looks like the disease may have arrived into the wild on the wind.”
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