There are many things that humans can do to help the trees – whether we loving tend to the trees in our own garden, perhaps helped by the professionals like tree surgery Gloucester based company Geoffrey Urch, or donate money to conservation efforts going on in the rainforests of the Amazon – known as the lungs of the world and under threat from deforestation.
However whilst we humans have been busy dealing with our own epidemic, our native British Ash trees are also facing their own plague. Ash dieback is a fungal disease that has been quietly spreading from Asia and across Europe for the last few decades, but was confirmed to have reached UK shores in 2012.
In south east England, where the epidemic was first noticed, there are many Ash trees that have been already killed by this brutal fungal infection, and although there is now an import ban on all Ash trees from outside the UK it is a bit too little too late as the fungus has now been discovered all over the country.
Sadly, around 80% of all of our native Ash trees will be lost to this deadly disease, and with it will be the hundreds of species of bird and insect life that rely on the tree and make up part of the rich biodiversity of our woodlands.
However, there is a lot of hope that the population of Ash trees may be able to repair themselves – a small number of the UK trees are believed to have immunity, so will be able to create more new trees to repair the damage done to their species.