Trees: British Ash Tree

Lord Best Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Earl for initiating this debate. I declare my interest as a trustee of the Tree Council, a body that emerged from the disaster of Dutch elm disease, which destroyed between 25 million and 30 million elms. In 1973, National Tree Planting Year was launched—“Plant a Tree in 73”—with cross-party support in an effort to engage the public and repopulate the land with trees. On 1 January 1974, the Tree Council was formed to continue the encouragement of planting, care and conservation of trees and to act as a critical friend and adviser to Governments.

In 1979, After the Elm was published in collaboration with the Tree Council in an effort to identify and benefit from the lessons of Dutch elm disease. Its conclusions included that controls had worked most effectively when organisations worked together strategically on a regional basis rather than being locally organised; that the amount of funding dedicated to the fight had been inadequate; and that lay members of the public were crucial in the work to identify the spread of the disease.

In 1987, the great storm wiped out millions more trees, literally overnight. Just as the Tree Council was spawned from the Dutch elm disease response, the Tree Council’s volunteer tree warden scheme came into being as a direct result of that, a different sort of tragedy. Today, we have about 8,000 tree wardens, unsung heroes, across the UK, a wonderful example of the big society at work. The volunteer tree wardens work in their communities to educate, engage and enthuse people about trees, as well as taking practical steps to improve local environments. I pay tribute to them and to our director-general, Pauline Buchanan Black, and her team who support them. On 28 November, we will be celebrating this year’s National Tree Week and the contribution of tree wardens here, in your Lordships’ House, with the Minister from the other place, David Heath MP.

At this time of a new disaster for trees in this country, the Tree Council is ready and willing to help. We have been briefing all the networks of tree wardens on what to look out for and how to report it. They have been sending in vitally important reports to the Forestry Commission on suspected outbreaks of ash dieback. Too many plant diseases and pests have been introduced into or taken hold in this country over the past 10 years: sudden oak death, acute oak decline, oak processionary moth, Asian longhorn beetle, leaf miner and bleeding canker. Estimates suggest that there are at least 80 million ash trees across the UK. If the disease follows the same progress as in Denmark, we stand to lose around 90% of our ash trees over the next nine years. That is 72 million trees: a disaster on a scale up to three times worse than Dutch elm disease.

The important issue now is not to apportion blame but to take effective action to minimise the impact not just of this disease but of each of the threats to tree health that have found their way to these shores in the past decade. The Tree Council, its member organisations and thousands of volunteers will all play their part. However, it will also be important to revisit the lessons learnt from this and earlier experiences and to find ways of ensuring that they are retained in the collective memory and mainstreamed into action plans that will continue to be followed and updated regularly to protect our tree stock in the future. Trained volunteers will be critical to the success of any plan. The Tree Council’s tree wardens are already on the case but need to be integrated within long-term strategies. The scale of this threat must not be underestimated by the Government. Once again, we face landscape changes on an almost unimaginable scale. This is a time not for blame but, as in 1973, for collaboration and action. We must all do our utmost to prevent any similar disaster in the future.