A deadly fungus disease threatening ash trees in Britain may be impossible to eradicate, a government scientist has said. Ash dieback disease, or chalara fraxinea, has been confirmed at 52 locations across the United Kingdom. Source: UPI
The government was aware of the arrival of the disease in Britain as early as 2009 but it was only last week that imports of ash trees were banned and a government scientist said efforts to deal with it could be too late.
“We are probably not going to be able to eradicate it,” said Martin Ward, chief plant health officer for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
Plant experts in Europe “where they have been living with the disease for longer” were being consulted about ways to slow the spread of the fungus, Ward said in a radio interview with the BBC.
The fungal disease has killed up to 90% of ash trees in some areas of Denmark.
The discovery of the disease in mature trees in the east of Britain has brought concerns it has blown into the country as well as arriving on imports and will be hard to control.
A British plant nursery forced to destroy 50,000 ash trees said it would sue the government for failing to block imports sooner.
