The Forestry Commission has established a Biosecurity Programme Board to oversee and advise on its work to protect Britain’s trees and forests from pests and diseases.
It comprises representatives from across the forestry and wood-using sectors, as well as experts from the Commission itself. It will advise the Commission on how best to implement a programme of forest protection that will be set out in a new Plant Health Strategy that it will publish in 2010.
The board will help the Commission to meet its objective of “preserving the health and vitality of Britain’s forests, trees and woodlands through strategies which exclude, detect and respond to existing and new pests and pathogens of trees, whether native or of exotic origin”.
Announcing its formation, Roddie Burgess, Head of the Commission’s Plant Health Service, said,
“The enormous increase in movements of people and trade across international boundaries has meant a commensurate increase in the risk of pests and pathogens accidentally entering Britain and posing threats to the health of our trees, woods and forests.
“Climate change might also be contributing to the increased risk, in that pests and pathogens that previously could not have survived our winters are now surviving here as we experience fewer hard frosts in winter and, particularly, late spring.
“During the past decade alone we have had to deal with outbreaks of a number of pests and pathogens previously unknown here.
“We are therefore strengthening our plant health strategy in the light of this increased risk and occurrence, and the formation of this Biosecurity Programme Board is part of the emerging strategy.
“I’m delighted with the response from our partners in the forestry and wood-using sectors in joining the board and contributing their knowledge and expertise to our efforts to tackle this issue.”
The board is chaired by Roger Coppock, Head of the Forestry Commission’s Specialist Advisors, and held its first meeting on 26th November, 2009. Its full terms of reference, membership and papers are published in the plant health pages of the Forestry Commission website at http://www.forestry.gov.uk/website/forestry.nsf/byunique/infd-7xugl2.
NOTES TO EDITOR:
- Organisations represented on the board are: ConFor (the Confederation of Forest Industries); the UK Forest Products Association (the trade body for sawmillers and other users and processors of forest products); TIMCON (the Timber Packaging & Pallet Confederation); the Timber Trades Federation; the Arboricultural Association; and each of the Commission’s GB, England, Scotland and Wales administrations and its Forest Research arm. The Northern Ireland Forest Service has observer status at the board’s meetings.
- The Biosecurity Programme Board and the Forestry Commission’s Plant Health Strategy remits cover diseases and invertebrate pests of woodland trees and plants. They do not include vertebrate pest animals such as grey squirrels.
- Tree pests that have appeared for the first time in Britain during the past decade include oak processionary moth and horse chestnut leaf miner moth. A longer-established pest is the great spruce bark beetle (Dendroctonus micans, pictured), for which effective management techniques have been developed by Forest Research scientists. Meanwhile, pine-tree lappet moth (Dendrolimus pini) was recently discovered breeding in forests in northern Scotland. The Commission is investigating its status and the potential for it to become a pest if it expands its range and population in Britain.
- Pathogens that cause tree diseases and which have recently appeared include: Phytophthora ramorum, which mostly infects rhododendron shrubs, but which was recently discovered infecting Japanese larch trees in South West England; Phytophthora kernoviae, which also infects rhododendron and some species of tree; and Pseudomonas syringae pathovar aesculi, a bacterium that causes often-fatal bleeding cankers on horse chestnut trees. Dothistroma septosporum, which causes red band needle blight of pine, has been present in Britain for some decades, but has recently developed into a more serious threat. This has prompted the Commission to stop planting Corsican pine trees while it carries out more research into the problem. Forest Research scientists are also investigating the cause of a form of the condition known as ‘acute oak decline’ that is causing bleeding lesions on oak trees in parts of England, leading to rapid tree deaths in many cases.
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