Articles: 100,000 Ash trees destroyed to halt spread of deadly disease!
As of Monday there has been a ban on importing Ash tree’s after 100,000 trees were destroyed to help stop the spread of the deadly ash dieback disease. The government has also set up an expert tree disease task force to tackle the problem.
The disease was first found in the UK in February and has since been found in other nurseries. Now however it is feared that the disease, which incidentally has the potential to extremely decrease the UK’s Ash population, has spread to mature trees.
The Chalara fraxinea fungus which causes the ash Dieback disease has already wiped out 90% of Ash trees in Denmark. The Environmental minister David Heath told MPs that 100,000 Ash trees had been destroyed to help stop the spread of the disease which is 42,000 more than he had originally disclosed.
Shadow environment secretary Mary Creagh asked why the government did nothing over summer before the disease broke out into the wild and accused them of “Dithering.” She also attacked the budget cuts given to the Forestry commission because she believed that these cuts meant that they had more difficulty with identifying and tackling a disease.