02.11.12
Government crisis meeting over tree disease
The Government’s ‘Cobra’ crisis committee is meeting today to discuss measures to prevent the wipe-out of the UK’s ash tree population from a deadly fungus that has ravaged parts of continental Europe.
The fungal disease, recently found in East Anglia, causes leaf loss and crown dieback and can lead to ash tree death. It has wiped out up to 90% of ash trees in Denmark.
Imports of ash trees have been banned since Monday, but it is widely feared to be too late.
Environmental campaigner and journalist George Monbiot says the past two environment secretaries, Hilary Benn for Labour and Caroline Spelman for the Conservatives, should be held accountable.
In an open letter to the MPs, he said: “…It now emerges that there were repeated warnings from experts about the spread and gravity of the disease, and that European ecologists – as well as British foresters and conservationists – were begging the UK Government to take all necessary measures to prevent the fungus from arriving here, so that there would at least be one uninfected redoubt.
“If ash die-back is now spreading across Britain as a result of your combined inaction, you carry responsibility for causing one of the greatest environmental crises ever to have struck this country: a profound loss that will be felt by everyone who loves the natural world.”
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(Ash tree image copyright Amanda Slater used here under a Creative Commons licence, some rights reserved).