Learning lessons from the ashes

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/nov/04/learning-lessons-from-the-ashes

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The UK boasts several internationally significant populations of ash that require the highest levels of protection. These will be lost if we do not urgently target resources to these areas to try to at least slow progress of the ash dieback disease (Most UK ash trees will be diseased 'within 10 years', 3 November).

Top of the list must be those in the Lake District, which includes significant numbers of ash in ancient semi-natural woodlands and many hundreds of ancient pollards. Pollarding (lopping branches off trees at a height of 3-4m above ground on a regular cycle) is integral to the silvopastoral system practiced for centuries in the region.

In valleys such as Borrowdale there are specimens many hundreds of years old which provide vital habitat for rare lichens, birds, bats and invertebrates. They are as much part of the landscape as the lakes, Herdwick sheep and vernacular architecture.

Our experience with dutch elm disease, foot and mouth and red squirrel conservation, tells us that core populations need to be identified for disease exclusion. We must apply the lessons of history and urgently direct resources to our most valuable ash populations. Edward R Wilson Penrith, Cumbria

• On Radio 4 it was reported that Owen Paterson, the environment secretary, has said there was no delay in implementing precautions to prevent the spread of Chalara fraxinea, the fungus that causes ash dieback. He said all precautions have been appropriate.

The Guardian (1 November) printed a timeline which says the Horticultural Trades Association reported the disease had become widespread in Denmark in 2009 and that it called for a ban on imports. The government took no action.

European countries have been asking for a ban on importation of sapling over the last two years. Nothing happened.

In February 2012 the disease was reportedly present in a nursery in Buckinghamshire. No action was taken.

In the summer of 2012 ash dieback was detected in plantations and nurseries across Scotland and in the UK. No action was taken. In October 2012 cases were identified in Norfolk and Suffolk. The government announced a period of public consultation which "might lead to a ban on importation of saplings".

We are told "100,000 ash trees have been felled" to prevent disease spreading. I understand that 100,000 saplings have been destroyed.

On 26 October Paterson announced there would be a ban on importing ash saplings. Does Paterson have a different concept of "no delay"? David Hurry Hurstpierpoint, West Sussex

• I congratulate your correspondents, particularly Sara Maitland (We're all tree huggers now, 1 November) regarding the ash disaster. There is no defence against an airborne virus so it must be accepted the majority of ash in the UK will die. Then all efforts to minimise timber loss must be put in place. To do this, unaffected trees must be felled and stored for future use. We would then have ash timber available for 20 years. This would give tree owners a return from their losses. Diseased trees should be used for firewood. There is no point in restricting movement unless the Forestry Commission can prevent the airborne virus and prevent the wind from blowing affected leaves across the countryside.

To make matters worse, Forestry Commission Scotland is to force owners of infected ash trees to destroy them or be fined £5,000. Threatening owners with fines does not make for good relations, particularly as the commission may be blamed for allowing contaminated nursery stock from Europe into Britain. The Forestry Commission cannot continue saying "it wisna' me".

Unfortunately, I can foresee multiple claims against the Forestry Commission going through the courts.

In the meantime, I have asked the local Forestry Commission conservator for a meeting with other interested parties to clear the air and hopefully go forward together to make the best of a very bad job.

Perhaps this time common sense will prevail over red tape. Donald Barker CEO, Broadleaf Trust, Auchtermuchty, Fife

• We are not nature's custodians (Editorial, 1 November). She is ours; and she will cast us aside as blithely as she did any extinct species you care to think of. Joseph Byrne Ennis County Clare, Ireland

• If only I'd known! For 30 years I have struggled to uproot the determined crop of ash seedlings springing up in my garden. Had any nursery appealed for supplies before importing them from the Netherlands, I'd have happily obliged. Dr Janet Sturgis Tunbridge Wells, Kent

• Back in October 2010 in an investigation into the threats facing Britain's trees, I reported the warnings of Prof Clive Brasier of Forest Research, part of the Forestry Commission, "whose research on the Phytophthora pathogens," I wrote, "should have caused alarm bells to ring some time ago." Brasier was clear that the international protocols that govern the trade and movement of trees and root stocks hadn't been properly revisited since the 1950s and were now inadequate. The trade in plants, said Brasier at the time, "is now highly globalised and yet most European nurseries and plant health organisations have little knowledge that they may be harbouring exotic Phytophthora pathogens – pathogens that should never have made their way to Europe at all."

I concluded the article by saying: '"Even as we digest the unpalatable truth that a broad variety of our native and non-native trees are under sustained attack from imported pathogens, it is being reported that yet another new fungus is now killing ash trees in parts of Europe. If the experience of the horse chestnut, larch and alder are anything to go by, it will soon be here – if it's not here already."

Ministers have received repeated warnings, and have chosen to do nothing until now, and now it may be too late. This staggering degree of incompetence has been compounded by the earlier threat to sell off Britain's forests, and the subsequent heavy cuts to Forestry Commission budgets.

Sadly the recent history of multi-agency failure, government cutbacks and new bureaucratic hoops to leap through has largely undone the vitally important work of dedicated individuals and the local authorities in the dutch elm disease control area between Brighton and Eastbourne. Here, some of Britain's finest remaining rural stands of mature elm are fast falling to the disease that devastated the countryside in 1970s. The dutch elm disease epidemic was, and remains, the most obvious reminder of what can happen if the globalised trade in timber and plants is not properly regulated – as it is in other island nations such as New Zealand.

Fortunately the London-based Conservation Foundation, which has done so much to highlight the plight of the elm and repopulate the country with more disease resistant varieties (sadly the English elm has no resistance to the disease), is determined to try and save some of the remaining rural elms in East Sussex, possibly through annual anti-fungal injections.

But whether the government has finally learned some lessons, and is able to counter the deadly ash disease and other threats to our native trees, we shall soon discover. Mark Seddon Singleborough, Buckinghamshire