Woodlands Under Threat

As we enjoy wild flowers in our county’s beautiful woodlands this spring, it’s easy to forget just how many challenges our native trees are facing. DIANE MILLIS investigates.

- Diane Millis

SUSSEX has an enviable amount of trees and woods compared to the rest of the country – it’s one of the top three most wooded counties in England, alongside Surrey and Hampshire. But we would do well not to take this bounty for granted. Our woods and trees are facing threats on a scale not seen in living memory.

The numbers of new tree pests and diseases in the UK has grown massively. According to Forestry Commission (FC) figures, there were five outbreaks in 32 years (1970-2002) but there have been 17 outbreaks in just the past 13 years (2003-2016).

One of these outbreaks was the arrival of Chalara, or ash dieback, in 2012. “Ash dieback has largely disappeared from the headlines so it’s easy to think that it has gone away, but it is now found across the UK and will only get worse,” says Dr Matt Elliot, conservation adviser – tree and woodland health at the Woodland Trust.

It had been hoped that British ash trees could prove more able to survive than their Danish counterparts – some 90 per cent of which have been affected – but this is yet to be firmly established. “There does seem to be some tolerance (not immunity or resistance) in some ash trees in the UK but it is too early to say how extensive this tolerance is and whether sufficient tolerant trees survive to allow the ash population to recover. It will perhaps be more than 50 years until we can say,” confirms Dr Elliot.