FORESTRY experts have expressed deep concern for Ulster’s ash trees, which are threatened by a killer infection.
Last week, Stormont announced a ban on ash tree imports in a bid to halt “ash dieback disease”, a fungal infection that has been killing trees in Europe for 20 years.
But it could come too late to prevent the fungus taking hold in Ireland after cases of it were discovered in Co Leitrim on the border with Fermanagh earlier this month.
The disease is already said to have wiped out more than four-fifths of all ash trees in Denmark and Poland.
And since between 30 to 50 per cent of all trees in Ulster are thought to be ash, it could spell disaster for the Province’s parks, forests and countryside.
Ian McCurley, forestry advisor for the National Trust, said the disease is unusually fast, and no treatment exists.
It can move up to 40 miles every year, and kills trees by suffocating them with tiny, invisible fungal spores.
Asked what Ulster’s countryside would look like if the disease took hold here, he said: “I don’t even really want to think about it. I don’t know what could replace it – it’s such a feature of the landscape.”
He added: “If you were to jump in a car and drive to Fermanagh from Belfast, all the hedgerows are full of ash.
“Hedgerows, farmlands, parklands – 50 per cent (of all trees) isn’t a far cry away from it.”
There have also been outbreaks reported in mainland UK, but as Mr McCurley points out: “The scary one is Leitrim.”
The stock at the infected woodland site there has been destroyed.
Patrick Cregg, director of the Woodland Trust in Northern Ireland, had this stark warning: “Leitrim is fairly close to the border. Diseases don’t recognise any frontiers.
“The fact is, being on the border could mean the spores of the fungus could be wind-borne, so it could very easily blow across the border.”
Ash is indigenous to the British Isles, and is often planted as part of re-foresting measures, or to be grown commercially for firewood, pool cues and hurley sticks.
Up to 150,000 ash plants are imported to Northern Ireland each year.
The disease was first confirmed in the Republic on October 12.
Late on Friday afternoon, the Department for Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) announced the ban jointly alongside the government in the Republic of Ireland.
It applies to imports from areas already affected by the disease.
A similar ban also came into force yesterday in mainland UK.
“By working together we can protect our native trees from this devastating disease,” said Environment Secretary Owen Paterson when unveiling the move – although political rivals accused him of being slow to act.
The fungus responsible, chalara fraxinea, first exhibits itself by causing the crown of a tree to die back, before lesions develop on the tree.
Comparisons have been drawn between this infection and Dutch elm disease, which devastated the elm population in the 1970s.
See Morning View, page 14