Tree Health in England

Lord Colgrain Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Colgrain (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a woodland owner, sadly with far too many dead and dying ash trees in the woods. Shortly after the then Prime Minister David Cameron asked us all to hug a hoodie, I was told that hugging an ash tree was an indication as to whether the tree was mature enough to withstand Chalara. The thinking was that if you embraced an ash tree and your fingers could meet around its back, it was deemed small and immature, and thus susceptible to the disease. If your fingers could not touch, it might be robust enough to resist. I have to report, with much sadness, that this unscientific approach has not proved accurate and that many of the trees I tried to embrace and thought might survive have not.

I mention this because it is no less plausible an approach to identifying those vulnerable to the disease than many others that have been put forward. I am told that approximately 10% of the ash on the continent are surviving the disease, not 20% as the Woodland Trust states. Consequently, there should be a similar percentage of trees surviving here in England but, notwithstanding what the Minister will no doubt say, there seems to be a woeful lack of science currently at work.

Dutch elm disease occurred decades ago and it is only now that inward trials are taking place with resistant whips from UK stock—one site, I am delighted to say, is located in my own county of Kent. At the end of this month, a symposium is taking place at Kew on elm trees and their associated diseases. Given how long it has taken for such a symposium to come about, what does this mean for ash trees? Can the Minister tell us how long we will have to wait before we have similar developments at work on ash?

The Tree Council says that the ash population may recover over 50 years. I fear that this is fanciful; it has not proved to be the case with elms, and there is no prospect of an indigenation of elms regrowing yet. Is there really any meaningful difference between ash and elm? Forest Research says that its ash seed orchard should begin producing resistant trees from the mid-2030s, which really does seem a lifetime away.

For a whole variety of unrelated reasons, we seem to be being visited by one tree disease or pest after another, the spruce Ips beetle being one of the most recent. As my noble friend the Minister knows—I thank him and his department for all their helpful responses to date on this—the compensation payment claims that relate to this one disease are currently clogging up Forestry Commission resources, with the consequence that some felling programmes are being delayed. Disease firewall benefits are thus not coming into being.

Can the Minister give assurances that the necessary staffing resources are being deployed to overcome this impediment? Can he indicate what work is being done to encourage the introduction and planting of new tree species that will be resistant to the climate changes already being experienced, as well as those anticipated? Can he also direct more effort towards the granting of funding for the management of existing woodland, particularly coppicing, rather than directing funds towards new plantings, which are often taking place in inappropriate locations with inappropriate species, as my noble friend Lord Caithness alluded to earlier?