Sir, – On the official website Merrionstreet.ie, the Department of Agriculture asks members of the public to be vigilant regarding Chalara fraxinea, a new disease which has just been found in Ireland and which endangers our wonderful ash trees.
I was in the country on Sunday, and I walked along some roads and fields and I looked, as requested. I could not help but notice how all our ash trees look sparse, thin and ill. I noticed this last year too. All our trees look stressed now but ash in particular seem in a desperate condition.
The misnamed Rural Environmental Protection Scheme (Reps) pays farmers to reduce our hedgerows to stumps. All that’s left are row after row of mangled hedges, full of gaping wounds, almost inviting fungal pathogens in.
Ash trees makes up a sizable portion of our hedgerow plants. If one infected tree is flailed and the machine continues along other hedges, how can the spread of infection be either seen or avoided? – Yours, etc,