Official- Ash disease 'beyond containment'

[Alex]

Will be plenty of firewood available in the East country this year, wood burning stoves might see their sales increase too!

So let me get this straight, if you are in ownership of land with ash trees, and they have this disease, you are forced to fell them - remove them? Or as they are your own trees you could just keep them and hope they develop some resistance to it?

If the tree is left to it, how long does it take for the whole tree to die?

I'd be sad to lose some of the very mature ash tree's that are currently growing along our brook, and are really holding the banks of it in place. I can only hope due to my location it won't get to us.

My thoughts are with those who might not be so lucky.

[SimonFisher]

So let me get this straight, if you are in ownership of land with ash trees, and they have this disease, you are forced to fell them - remove them? Or as they are your own trees you could just keep them and hope they develop some resistance to it?

My understanding is that until the official response changes from one of containment with a view to eradication, you'd be required to have them felled and destroyed (burned). Hopefully, very soon it will be realised that containment and eradication isn't going to work and the requirement will be relaxed.

[Emma S]

kent too. so still east ut further down.
ash is one of the few variations from hornbeam which we have in our woods,sadly

[splodger]

does anybody know if the movement of recently felled or soon to be felled ash has been restricted ? or would that apply only to diseased timber? we don't have much ash on our site - but somebody else was asking about it today - as they want to cut down an overhanging ash tree that's in their garden and wanted me to trailer it away

[SimonFisher]

does anybody know if the movement of recently felled or soon to be felled ash has been restricted ? or would that apply only to diseased timber?

Not restricted. From the Forestry Commission's own Q&A page on the legislation (http://www.forestry.gov.uk/forestry/infd-8yrdy7)

"the general prohibition on spreading Chalara fraxinea means that movement is prohibited within Great Britain of logs and firewood from woodlands and sites with confirmed Chalara fraxinea infection which have been served with a Statutory Plant Health Notice."

[docsquid]

A friend attended the summit yesterday. It seems that all the options are being considered, but it is likely that the strategies will change from slash and burn to selective action. You are correct that at the moment you have to pay to have the diseased trees felled, and destroyed. There is a lot of discussion happening about whether the requirements to destroy timber on site can be relaxed, given that this is a low risk activity (by the evidence on DEFRA own web site), provided leaf litter is not transported with the timber.

The mindset is changing towards destruction of heavily infected trees, but away from slash and burn, and away from killing all trees showing any sign of infection, since the resistant ones will form the future for ash trees. This is not yet official policy, but is very much the gist of advice that seems to be coming from those (sadly few) who know about tree diseases, and this one in particular.

A very useful paper on silvicultural strategies for affected ash stands from Denmark is available here http://bfw.ac.at/400/pdf/fsaktuell_55_6.pdf and the summary of scientific evidence re Chalara is here http://www.forestry.gov.uk/forestry/INFD-8ZSS7U