The spread of the deadly fungus threatening all 80m British ash trees cannot be stopped, a leading Government scientist has said, and Britain’s woods and forests will have to undergo major change as a result.
As new figures were issued showing that chalara, or ash dieback disease, had now been found in 115 sites from Northumberland to Sussex, the Chief Scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), Professor Ian Boyd, conceded that the march of the disease across the countryside would be impossible to halt.
Government scientists are making a clear distinction between the planting sites and nurseries, on the one hand, where the fungus has been found on imported saplings,, and the infected mature woodlands in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Kent, on the other, where the disease has almost certainly been blown in on fungal spores from continental Europe, where it is widespread.
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