Blighted: Simon Ellis of Crowders . The Government is to be sued for more than £200,000 in damages by the country’s biggest grower of native trees over the delays in handling the outbreak of ash dieback disease. Robert Crowder, chairman and owner of Crowders Nurseries in Horncastle, Lincolnshire, has had to destroy 50,000 ash trees and is blaming three months of dithering and delay by  officials for his losses. He is furious that plant health officials who identified about 15 infected trees at his nursery in June issued an emergency order that prevented him from touching or removing the trees. It meant the disease spread like wildfire. Several hundred trees became infected before officials took any further action and on September 17 he was given just six weeks to destroy all 50,000 ash trees. Mr Crowder is also angry that the Government ignored warnings about the potential impact of the disease that the Horticultural Trades Association has been making since 2009. The Government has ruled out paying compensation for loss of diseased ash trees, but Mr Crowder, whose firm grows five million trees a year, is preparing to challenge this. He said: ‘We intend to take legal action. Officials have been slow to react to the potential danger of the disease.’ Officials turned up at the 200-year-old family firm in June. They had identified an infected tree in Leicester that had been supplied by Crowders and wanted to check other trees. Simon Ellis, marketing director at Crowders, said: ‘We were genuinely surprised. We could not understand where the disease came from. ‘We grow from English seed and occasionally if we have storm or flood damage we buy in extra stock from English suppliers. Threat: Ash trees across  the UK are endangered by dieback disease . Destroyed: The uprooted ash trees at the nursery . ‘It was only this summer we found out our supplier sent his young ash saplings to the Continent to grow and we bought 10,000 of them. Some went to Leicester for a park-and-ride scheme. ‘The usual advice when you get  disease in a tree is you lift it out of the ground and then you burn it. ‘They came at the end of June and found about 15 infected trees. But the officials did not know what to do. We waited and waited.’ On July 19 the firm received a notice. Mr Ellis said he expected this to be the order to destroy the trees. ‘But the notice stated the trees must not be pruned, lopped, trimmed or moved until further notice,’ he said. Horse-riders were urged to wash mud from their animals’ hooves to avoid spreading the disease. It was feared that their mounts could carry the fungus spores from one woodland to another. As the hunt season started this weekend, there were concerns that dogs from more than 200 packs of foxhounds, stag hounds and beagles  could move the spores across the countryside. Environment Secretary Owen Paterson said: ‘Everyone should be responsible.’ However, Defra said it would not impose any temporary bans on hunts. ‘Again we waited and were worried about the delays. Then on September 19 we got the destruction notice. By then several hundred trees were infected. ‘Then they decided we needed to get rid of all our ash trees, and there were 50,000 of them. We pulled them up and burnt them within two weeks, but we have lost at least £200,000. ‘We still can’t understand why they didn’t let us destroy the infected  trees in June. ‘The problem is that officials are  not experienced in recognising the disease or knowing what to look for.’ Crowders is one of 12 nurseries where the disease has been found in ash trees. But according to Mr Ellis it is the only nursery named in emails circulated by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to other organisations involved in handling the outbreak. Mr Ellis said: ‘We are also going to sue for loss of reputation because we are aggrieved our company name is being repeatedly mentioned and linked to infected sites.’ A Defra spokesman said: ‘The 1967 Plant Health Act allows for an option of compensation for plant disease but there is no legal obligation. At a time when our trees face increasing threat from a range of diseases and when we are seeking to maintain tight controls on spending and reduce the deficit, it is our view  that resources are best spent on surveillance and other preventative disease-management activities.’ Two years ago I was in Kyoto, Japan. In the mountain woods around the city, about one-tenth of the trees had suddenly died within  six months, but not because anyone had failed to keep the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Pines – much-loved historic trees in Japan – had been killed by a microscopic worm from America. Oaks, including a species closely related to English oak, had been slaughtered by a mysterious new fungus disease and the insect that conveys it. No one knew where it came from. What can I say about the new ash disease? I told you so. It fits a pattern that has been known, but not heeded, since my student days. I have been saying this for more than ten years in lectures and articles, and in my New Naturalist book Woodlands, published in 2006. The gravest threat to the world’s trees and forests is not people cutting down trees, nor climate change, nor even too many deer: it is globalisation of tree diseases. Most native plant diseases and pests have existed for millions  of years alongside their local host plants, which have come to terms with them, so they do only limited damage. This breaks down when people, usually inadvertently, bring them into contact with new host plants that are not adapted to them. Evolution does not provide an answer, because plants, especially trees, have long generation times. Fungi and worms can run rings round them in evolutionary terms. Plant diseases are being moved around the world and are subtracting tree after tree at random from lands that have no previous experience of them. I could quote 20 examples: European elm disease in America, the American vine pests and diseases that very nearly killed off wine-making in Europe, sweet-chestnut disease in Europe and America, etc. England has had alder disease, and the micro-caterpillar that turns horse-chestnut leaves brown, among others, but so far we been let off lightly, compared with Japan or Australia. Globalisation has gone into top gear in the past 40 years through the growth of international trade. Some of the responsibility lies with the tree-planting movement. Since 1973 (remember the Plant a Tree in 73 campaign?) planting ‘native’ trees has become institutional, with contracts to be bid for, work to be finished on time and budgets to be spent by the end of the financial year. An industry has arisen, geared to human administrators, which clashes with the behaviour of trees and their parasites. If English oak trees haven’t produced acorns this year, the contractor cannot wait until  next year but goes to a country where acorns are available. This stimulates a trade in living plants. Anyone importing a million container-grown hawthorns from Hungary – as if there were not enough hawthorns in Britain – inevitably imports 1,000 tons of Hungarian soil and whatever is in it. Planting imported trees, even if the original seed was ‘local’, carries a risk for existing trees. At a conference in Ireland in 2004, I remarked that the Irish had had enough experience of imported plant disease – the calamitous potato famine from 1845, caused by a fungus that fell off an American ship – to last them 1,000 years. The man from the Ministry got up and bleated that nothing could be done because this would restrict trade and the World Trade Organization would not allow it. Little seems to be definitely known about ash disease: nobody knows where the fungus came from, how it travels, how long it has been here, or even how many of the trees are killed. The fungus kills the shoots, and the tree produces a bunch of replacement shoots – but this can happen from other causes as well. Perfect health is not the normal state of trees. Ash disease is difficult to recognise, indeed probably impossible until next spring, now that most ash leaves have fallen. What is to be done? Probably nothing effective in the present state of ignorance. Talk of exterminating ash trees within 20 miles of an infection cannot be taken seriously given the vast numbers of trees and the practical difficulty of finding and destroying them – and the need to repeat the performance every time ash disease is detected, until there are no ash trees left. It seems that any of the world’s plant diseases is at liberty to enter Britain provided it does so via some other European Union country. By the time the problem has been detected and the bureaucracy has clanked into action, it is too late. Once a tree disease has become established in a country, it is almost unknown for it to be controlled, let alone exterminated. One piece of good news: the Forestry Commission’s pathology research establishment at Alice Holt has been revived after years of decline. It is badly needed. Oliver Rackham is a botanist and historical ecologist, and a Fellow of Corpus Christi  College, Cambridge.
The biggest grower in UK blames Forestry officers for fatal delay after his warning .
He is left devastated as he burns  trees – and now he’s suing for huge losses .
Blighted: Simon Ellis of Crowders . The Government is to be sued for more than £200,000 in damages by the country’s biggest grower of native trees over the delays in handling the outbreak of ash dieback disease. Robert Crowder, chairman and owner of Crowders Nurseries in Horncastle, Lincolnshire, has had to destroy 50,000 ash trees and is blaming three months of dithering and delay by  officials for his losses. He is furious that plant health officials who identified about 15 infected trees at his nursery in June issued an emergency order that prevented him from touching or removing the trees. It meant the disease spread like wildfire. Several hundred trees became infected before officials took any further action and on September 17 he was given just six weeks to destroy all 50,000 ash trees. Mr Crowder is also angry that the Government ignored warnings about the potential impact of the disease that the Horticultural Trades Association has been making since 2009. The Government has ruled out paying compensation for loss of diseased ash trees, but Mr Crowder, whose firm grows five million trees a year, is preparing to challenge this. He said: ‘We intend to take legal action. Officials have been slow to react to the potential danger of the disease.’ Officials turned up at the 200-year-old family firm in June. They had identified an infected tree in Leicester that had been supplied by Crowders and wanted to check other trees. Simon Ellis, marketing director at Crowders, said: ‘We were genuinely surprised. We could not understand where the disease came from. ‘We grow from English seed and occasionally if we have storm or flood damage we buy in extra stock from English suppliers. Threat: Ash trees across  the UK are endangered by dieback disease . Destroyed: The uprooted ash trees at the nursery . ‘It was only this summer we found out our supplier sent his young ash saplings to the Continent to grow and we bought 10,000 of them. Some went to Leicester for a park-and-ride scheme. ‘The usual advice when you get  disease in a tree is you lift it out of the ground and then you burn it. ‘They came at the end of June and found about 15 infected trees. But the officials did not know what to do. We waited and waited.’ On July 19 the firm received a notice. Mr Ellis said he expected this to be the order to destroy the trees. ‘But the notice stated the trees must not be pruned, lopped, trimmed or moved until further notice,’ he said. Horse-riders were urged to wash mud from their animals’ hooves to avoid spreading the disease. It was feared that their mounts could carry the fungus spores from one woodland to another. As the hunt season started this weekend, there were concerns that dogs from more than 200 packs of foxhounds, stag hounds and beagles could move the spores across the countryside. Environment Secretary Owen Paterson said: ‘Everyone should be responsible.’ However, Defra said it would not impose any temporary bans on hunts. ‘Again we waited and were worried about the delays. Then on September 19 we got the destruction notice. By then several hundred trees were infected. ‘Then they decided we needed to get rid of all our ash trees, and there were 50,000 of them. We pulled them up and burnt them within two weeks, but we have lost at least £200,000. ‘We still can’t understand why they didn’t let us destroy the infected  trees in June. ‘The problem is that officials are  not experienced in recognising the disease or knowing what to look for.’ Crowders is one of 12 nurseries where the disease has been found in ash trees. But according to Mr Ellis it is the only nursery named in emails circulated by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to other organisations involved in handling the outbreak. Mr Ellis said: ‘We are also going to sue for loss of reputation because we are aggrieved our company name is being repeatedly mentioned and linked to infected sites.’ A Defra spokesman said: ‘The 1967 Plant Health Act allows for an option of compensation for plant disease but there is no legal obligation. At a time when our trees face increasing threat from a range of diseases and when we are seeking to maintain tight controls on spending and reduce the deficit, it is our view that resources are best spent on surveillance and other preventative disease-management activities.’ Two years ago I was in Kyoto, Japan. In the mountain woods around the city, about one-tenth of the trees had suddenly died within six months, but not because anyone had failed to keep the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Pines – much-loved historic trees in Japan – had been killed by a microscopic worm from America. Oaks, including a species closely related to English oak, had been slaughtered by a mysterious new fungus disease and the insect that conveys it. No one knew where it came from. What can I say about the new ash disease? I told you so. It fits a pattern that has been known, but not heeded, since my student days. I have been saying this for more than ten years in lectures and articles, and in my New Naturalist book Woodlands, published in 2006. The gravest threat to the world’s trees and forests is not people cutting down trees, nor climate change, nor even too many deer: it is globalisation of tree diseases. Most native plant diseases and pests have existed for millions  of years alongside their local host plants, which have come to terms with them, so they do only limited damage. This breaks down when people, usually inadvertently, bring them into contact with new host plants that are not adapted to them. Evolution does not provide an answer, because plants, especially trees, have long generation times. Fungi and worms can run rings round them in evolutionary terms. Plant diseases are being moved around the world and are subtracting tree after tree at random from lands that have no previous experience of them. I could quote 20 examples: European elm disease in America, the American vine pests and diseases that very nearly killed off wine-making in Europe, sweet-chestnut disease in Europe and America, etc. England has had alder disease, and the micro-caterpillar that turns horse-chestnut leaves brown, among others, but so far we been let off lightly, compared with Japan or Australia. Globalisation has gone into top gear in the past 40 years through the growth of international trade. Some of the responsibility lies with the tree-planting movement. Since 1973 (remember the Plant a Tree in 73 campaign?) planting ‘native’ trees has become institutional, with contracts to be bid for, work to be finished on time and budgets to be spent by the end of the financial year. An industry has arisen, geared to human administrators, which clashes with the behaviour of trees and their parasites. If English oak trees haven’t produced acorns this year, the contractor cannot wait until  next year but goes to a country where acorns are available. This stimulates a trade in living plants. Anyone importing a million container-grown hawthorns from Hungary – as if there were not enough hawthorns in Britain – inevitably imports 1,000 tons of Hungarian soil and whatever is in it. Planting imported trees, even if the original seed was ‘local’, carries a risk for existing trees. At a conference in Ireland in 2004, I remarked that the Irish had had enough experience of imported plant disease – the calamitous potato famine from 1845, caused by a fungus that fell off an American ship – to last them 1,000 years. The man from the Ministry got up and bleated that nothing could be done because this would restrict trade and the World Trade Organization would not allow it. Little seems to be definitely known about ash disease: nobody knows where the fungus came from, how it travels, how long it has been here, or even how many of the trees are killed. The fungus kills the shoots, and the tree produces a bunch of replacement shoots – but this can happen from other causes as well. Perfect health is not the normal state of trees. Ash disease is difficult to recognise, indeed probably impossible until next spring, now that most ash leaves have fallen. What is to be done? Probably nothing effective in the present state of ignorance. Talk of exterminating ash trees within 20 miles of an infection cannot be taken seriously given the vast numbers of trees and the practical difficulty of finding and destroying them – and the need to repeat the performance every time ash disease is detected, until there are no ash trees left. It seems that any of the world’s plant diseases is at liberty to enter Britain provided it does so via some other European Union country. By the time the problem has been detected and the bureaucracy has clanked into action, it is too late. Once a tree disease has become established in a country, it is almost unknown for it to be controlled, let alone exterminated. One piece of good news: the Forestry Commission’s pathology research establishment at Alice Holt has been revived after years of decline. It is badly needed. Oliver Rackham is a botanist and historical ecologist, and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
by the country’s biggest grower of native trees delay by  officials for his losses. He is furious published in 2006. The gravest threat to the behaviour of trees and their parasites. If