simon wrote:On BBC Radio 4 "Saving Species" has a program about this.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... woodlands/
It includes a couple of bits from Oliver Rackham talking, what seems to me, to be profound good sence.
A rather more long term view, rather than running around shouting "Don't panic"
Should be compulsory listening for a lot of people who claim to be concerned about our woodland heritage. Peter Marren, in particular, is talking a lot of sense about the pitfalls of largescale tree planting. I've long had a bee in my bonnet about this - people (the Woodland Trust are particularly culpable) do it because it is 'sexy'. The local press will come out and photograph schoolchildren doing it. You can raise money for it. It extends our woodland cover (define a woodland, please).
They ignore the fact that trees self-seed. That self-seeding trees will produce a remarkably good impression of natural successsion (my god! perhaps it is natural succession!) And that what is sadly lacking is more management of our existing woodlands.
I have, as you may gather, little sympathy for tree planting and it seems that it is coming back to haunt us (though I will conceed that it was not intentional).
It seems as though 'wait and see' is pretty much our only recourse with the ash. Let's hope that genetic diversity and natural resistance keeps the problem on a smaller scale than may be the case.
Brian.