Did you mean as dieback?
Lord Clark of Windermere: ...outside Europe? On the domestic front, trees are a critical part of our rural and urban ecosystems. We all know about the effects of Dutch elm disease and larch being felled. Currently, we have ash dieback too—80% of our ash trees are under threat—and there are many other diseases facing trees. Historically, the trading relationship in shrubs and trees within Europe and between Europe...
Rebecca Pow: ...issues with trees. Managing pests, deer and grey squirrels is obviously important if we want to maintain trees and biodiversity, as is managing outbreaks of disease, such as the devastating ash dieback, which has been mentioned. I went up to the Quantocks near me the other day, and I nearly cried; it was so devastating. I took photographs—I am always sending them to my team—of how...
Lesley Griffiths: Tree felling has taken place within the Torfaen County Borough Council area for health and safety purposes due to Ash Dieback. The Council manage these responsibilities in line with Welsh Government policies and NRW’s guidance.
Lord King of Bridgwater: ...of maintaining our defences in these areas is enormous. I will add one brief word. I am sitting in the west country at the moment, looking at some pretty devastating scenes of what is called ash dieback, where the face of our countryside has been changed because of the import into this country of a dangerous disease. This is a constant challenge now. The role of the Environment Agency and...
Daniel Zeichner: ...that for sure. So there is always some cause for concern. On a personal level, I remember visiting the fantastic Sainsbury laboratory in the University of Cambridge a few years ago to be briefed on ash dieback. It is striking to see not only the excellent work that is being done to tackle these issues but the constant threats that we are facing. That is why it is so important that these...
Lord Framlingham: ..., such as oak. We are an island and have phytosanitary advantages that brings; we cannot afford to take the risk of more admission of serious diseases. We have suffered from Dutch elm disease and ash dieback, both of which are imported diseases. The first came from Canada and has almost completely wiped out our precious elm population. How many ash trees will be left when dieback has run...
Alex Easton: I thank the Minister for his answer. Will the Minister consider broadening out the scheme to include forests that have been culled due to the ash dieback disease?
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park: This is a priority area for Defra, a department that I belong to. Yes, we are seeing increasing numbers of threats to our native trees. The whole country is aware of ash dieback and we expect a very large number of our ash trees to be infected and die. The good news is that they will not all die; we expect up to 5% of those trees to have a natural tolerance, so the UK Government are funding...
Lord Hain: ...and drought—often with different challenges at the same time in different areas of the country. We have also experienced the impact that invasive diseases, such as bird influenza, blue tongue and ash dieback, can have on plants and animals. These unexpected, often catastrophic, events can deliver significant damage to our agriculture businesses, both individuals and whole sectors. A...
Viscount Trenchard: ...trees lose us 7% of agricultural land, as I thought he also said, and how many of these trees will be planted on brownfield sites? Was this policy adopted before or after it was recognised that ash dieback might decimate the country’s population of ash trees? The noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, in his Amendment 48 seeks to widen the...
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering: ...taken up by land managers in this regard. When I was on the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the other place, we looked at this in a report on Chalara, which causes the ash tree dieback. I hope that when my noble friend the Minister sums up she will confirm that the practice by which, for some bizarre reason, seeds used to be exported from this country to others...
Lord King of Bridgwater: I have seen all too closely at first hand the devastating worries over ash dieback, so my noble friend has my fullest support in ensuring that we maintain the tightest possible border biosecurity controls, otherwise the risk is quite clear: if there is a relaxation, as is suggested in Europe, it could be quite catastrophic. I hope the positive statements he has made will be carried steadily...
...diseases around the world. A previous Environment Minister, Thérèse Coffey, said that one dividend of Brexit would be that we could set much tighter phytosanitary rules. Well, I think we should cash in that dividend and see how far we can push it. There might be an option to say, “No live plant imports into the UK that are not grown from tissue culture.” At the moment, ash dieback...
Lesley Griffiths: I will have to write to the Member with an update on the last meeting of the ash dieback disease group, because I don't have those figures to hand. In relation to 'am I comfortable?' I don't really think that's a matter for me. If a local authority wants to give extra support to a household that's been traumatised by flooding, who am I to say that that local authority shouldn't do that? I...
Mark Reckless: ..., particularly with floods, I was drawn by a meeting of Confor that Andrew R.T. Davies chaired at lunch time about some of the tree planting initiatives and the links with flood, particularly the ash dieback disease, and how that's the tree, perhaps, that absorbs more water than any other, we were informed. Also, the flooding that we've seen on the Severn, particularly in Herefordshire...
Lord Gardiner of Kimble: ...this—that that would not always be the silver bullet. The biogeography of the British Isles means that some invasive pests and diseases cross the channel unassisted in the air, as happened with ash dieback, particularly in the eastern counties, although I do not deny that we have made some grave errors which we are now having to cope with. I agree with a number of noble Lords, including...
Jim Shannon: ...snail, can persist during periods of drought under stones and in damp vegetation and are common in turloughs—a unique type of disappearing lake found mostly in limestone areas. We all know about ash dieback, because no constituency will have been unaffected. The benefits of planting trees as a climate change abatement measure are widely reported, but rarely is there mention of invasive...
Caroline Lucas: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department has taken to help the UK's forests and woodlands recover from Ash Dieback; and what steps her Department is taking to prevent new diseases being imported.
Jim Shannon: .... The Leader of the House and the Government are well aware of the issue of invasive alien plants, animals and birds, such as mink, grey squirrels and signal crayfish, and of the problems caused by ash dieback and moth caterpillars. It is time to put the balance back into nature. There are now more parakeets than owls and kingfishers in Great Britain. Will the Leader of the House agree to...
Baroness Young of Old Scone: ...of it, so we need a land use strategy. The third is vast scaling-up of the availability of UK-sourced and grown disease-free tree stocks, so that we do not import more tree disease in the way that ash dieback is now decimating our woodlands. This House has a very important role to play in making sure that the commitments in the Queen’s Speech are actually delivered. On good days I get...