The Woodland Trust ash dieback campaign.... thoughts?

[SteveA]

What's your thoughts on The Woodland Trust #ashdieback campaign?....

 

I think it's a great opportunity for a money spinner: Paint by Pictures Forest

 

And they are testing for resistant strains..... well, I reckon mother nature will do a better job at that than any oober expensive 'field trial'.

 

I say sit back, let the trees die that will die and restock from the ones that don't.

Its not as though Ash trees don't grow fast.

 

hmmmm, #ashHumbug

[Kveldssanger]

Yes and no. We tampered with the genetic quality of ash in the 70s and 80s when masses of woodlands were planted up - gentic provenance was poor, in many cases. Therefore, one could argue that we now need to step in to fix a problem we created (both by tampering with genetic qualities of ash, and hastening the spread of chalara). A hands-off approach, when we otherwise always have a hand-on approach to everything, doesn't make much sense. Yes we need to allow the ash to regenerate naturally, though that cannot be done by the ash alone. We continued importing stock from Germany and The Netherlands long after they suspected they had chalara, for example. Stupid, stupid, stupid. We cannot absolve ourselves of that mistake by saying "oh nature will fix itself". Well there wouldn't have been a problem if we didn't tamper with nature like that in the first place.

 

Let us not also forget ash dieback isn't the only stress we have induced upon our ash. Pollution, landscape fragmentation, and otherwise, are further stressors. We also need to ensure that emerald ash borer doesn't make its way over here, else we are quite literally going to be screwed.

Edited December 8, 2015 by Kveldssanger

[SteveA]

Yes and no. We tampered with the genetic quality of ash in the 70s and 80s when masses of woodlands were planted up - gentic provenance was poor, in many cases. Therefore, one could argue that we now need to step in to fix a problem we created (both by tampering with genetic qualities of ash, and hastening the spread of chalara). A hands-off approach, when we otherwise always have a hand-on approach to everything, doesn't make much sense. Yes we need to allow the ash to regenerate naturally, though that cannot be done by the ash alone. We continued importing stock from Germany and The Netherlands long after they suspected they had chalara, for example. Stupid, stupid, stupid. We cannot absolve ourselves of that mistake by saying "oh nature will fix itself". Well there wouldn't have been a problem if we didn't tamper with nature like that in the first place.

 

Let us not also forget ash dieback isn't the only stress we have induced upon our ash. Pollution, landscape fragmentation, and otherwise, are further stressors. We also need to ensure that emerald ash borer doesn't make its way over here, else we are quite literally going to be screwed.

 

Surely there must be a huge amount of native ash that is continually regenerating itself here.... it's not as though every UK ash tree was uprooted and replanted with Chalara intolerant trees.

 

I see that map of the UK with Chalara spreading across the country and think it's a great method for scaring the general public into helping out, financially.

 

cheers, steve

[Kveldssanger]

Without question, you are right. What I'm trying to say is that human movement and consumption has played a role in the progression of chalara, in a sense that is 'artificial' - a pathogen would have typically not been able to hitch a ride on an ash sapling making its way swiftly across the North Sea from continental Europe, until we came along and decided to import ash from other countries.

 

To play a role in something, watch the brown stuff hit the fan, and then go "nah I think we can just leave this one to sort itself out" is more than a little bit sketchy, in terms of behaviour, and therefore I consider humans having a role to play in reducing the impact of chalara.

 

That is not to say 'mother nature' wouldn't do a good job, as with the Alaska oil spill, and the BP oil spill, the areas just left to their own devices typically fared better than where man went tin with more chemicals to clean up the oil spill they created. There is a time and a place to accept that nature will 'self-order', but when we have induced change from the natural order of things, we at least need to consider assisting with the regaining of order.

 

As for scaring the public to help out, it's rather ironic really. Not many members of the public were aware of our massive importation of ash stock from abroad, nor the slight nonchalance about chalara when it was first found in Europe, so to then expect them to be burdened financially with 'helping out' could be seen as the antithesis of 'logic'. The industry, in part, created the situation, so the response should really be by those who fuelled the issue before it suddenly became 'big'. Donations have their place, but scaring people into giving away money is not the way to do it - we should not rely on donations to bail us out of mistakes. We should rely on foresight and critical thinking for that - you can't buy those skills.

 

We saw the same with Dutch elm. It's almost like a repeat ad nauseum, with nothing ever changing substantially. We still import a lot of stuff to provide for a growing population with ever-increasing demands (that the public do, in all fairness, demand, in part), install phytosanitary measures, watch a pest come over, bemoan and lament the emergence of said pest, then carry on doing what was basically done anyway. It seems that the symptom is always tackled (the pest), not the cause (importation of goods, principally).

[SteveA]

Yeah, that's a good point on how it's been accelerated artificially by our own actions.... so it appears we can't stop it spreading, that's nigh on impossible....

 

....but realistically' if we can't do anything about it then what's the point in even trying to do something about something we know will have zero/ or close to zero effect?! (if that makes sense).

 

I don't see field trials radically speeding up the finding of chalara tolerant trees vs trees found in the wild under more natural/ real conditions.

 

Overall, it seems like a complete waste of time and money.... but great opportunity for organisations to cash in!! *ching, ching*

 

cheers, steve

[SteveA]

Here follows practical steps (as suggested by The Woodland Trust dieback campaign) that can be taken to prevent the spread of ash die back....

http://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/visiting-woods/tree-diseases-and-pests/what-we-are-doing/biosecurity/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=wt_treedisease_bd_december2015

 

I just hope the 65 million UK residents, especially the 24% of UK households that own a dog, and 35 million registered UK car drivers have read this.

 

Cheers, steve

[growforest]

Money-spinner. Kerching.

[difflock]

yup!

We have had our first official notification re "ash die back" over the sake of a sapling in a T Centre car park, no thicker than my girly wrist.

Which to my jaundiced eye looks remarkably healthy, bark wise, all smooth and green, obviously no leaves to be seen in Dec.

A man with a bicycle and a bowsaw could remove it in 15 mins.

But I suspect it will be a somewhat larger operation!

[agg221]

Yeah, that's a good point on how it's been accelerated artificially by our own actions.... so it appears we can't stop it spreading, that's nigh on impossible....

 

....but realistically' if we can't do anything about it then what's the point in even trying to do something about something we know will have zero/ or close to zero effect?! (if that makes sense).

 

I don't see field trials radically speeding up the finding of chalara tolerant trees vs trees found in the wild under more natural/ real conditions.

 

Overall, it seems like a complete waste of time and money.... but great opportunity for organisations to cash in!! *ching, ching*

 

cheers, steve

 

Steve, how aware are you of the current status of work in enabling the reintroduction of disease resistant elm? I don't just mean in the UK, I am talking Europe-wide.

 

In summary, it has taken 40yrs of analysis, breeding and testing to get to a point where some very limited field trials are underway in a very small number of locations. Yes, there are some other projects which are very unscientific and based more on hope than analysis, but the underpinning work is showing results. Half a human lifetime but barely a tick in tree-time.

 

The point is that sometimes when man makes a problem it is incumbent upon him to fix it. Not all fixes are good, some good (valid) work is not successful in achieving the desired result, some well intentioned but under-researched approaches make things worse. The latter point is a very good reason why unless you have some solid data behind what you do there is no good basis for understanding why you get a particular outcome.

 

Without the level of research undertaken, re-introduction of elm would not be a realistic proposition now. Left to its own devices, other human factors (such as development) would have prevented the route forward which has been identified from being achieved by natural means. If the results had already been known it would have been possible to undertake the 'one' trial which gave the desired outcome, but to predict which one you would have to be a fortune teller. Under-developed research would have resulted in the release of a clone into the field which suffered from a completely unrelated condition which had the potential to cause even more damage.

 

Whilst ash has a lot of potential to be self-selecting, saplings will sometimes grow to a reasonable size before they are affected. Thorough trials will give better understanding of factors such as dependency of variables, e.g. is there a correlation between resistance and vigour or growth habit? This gives a much better opportunity to minimise the impact than a random approach.

 

Alec

[SteveA]

As far as I can gather the variety gene pool of Ash is much wider than Elm; so it's a very different beast.

 

To me, it's far too little and far too late.... it's like peeing into these regular gale force winds we keep getting!

 

Cheers, steve