Fears for Lancashire's ash trees (From Lancashire Telegraph)
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Fears for Lancashire's ash trees
9:48am Tuesday 30th October 2012 in News
Ash trees are vulnerable to infection
IMPORTS of ash trees have been stopped in a bid to slow down the spread of a devastating disease.
The action comes after ash dieback, which causes leaf loss and crown dieback and can lead to tree death, was found at sites in East Anglia.
Tony Lund, countryside officer at the county council, said: “We have a lot of ash trees in our region, they make up a large proportion of our woodland.
“If the ash trees go it will be such a shame and have a big effect on our forests.”
Environment Secretary Owen Paterson said 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 disease wiped out 90 per cent of ash trees in Denmark in just seven years and is becoming widespread in central Europe.
Ash dieback was previously identified in nurseries and recently planted sites including 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.
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