News
Plant biosecurity strategy nears completion
Strategy will safeguard the future of the UK’s trees and plants from pests and disease
ENVIRONMENT ministers brought together a wealth of experience and expertise recently to help draft a new plant biosecurity strategy that will safeguard the future of the UK’s trees and plants against the threat of diseases like ash dieback.
The ‘Plant Health Stakeholder Summit’, held in London, will help develop a coordinated approach across the country for dealing with pests and diseases, with representatives from Government, woodland groups, academia and industry in attendance.
A key element has been the development of a risk register highlighting 700 possible threats to Britain’s trees and plants.
Environment Minister Lord de Mauley, said: “Safeguarding the future of our trees and plants is enormously important - on more than one occasion we have seen the dreadful trail of destruction such diseases can leave behind. And it’s not just the environment
peat’s sake
For
Britain is still using too much peat compost, say the RHS
that suffers, but the economy too.”
“It is vital for us to work with those outside of Government to get this plant health strategy right and successfully protect our environment from biosecurity threats.”
Defra has also already created a new Chief Plant Health Officer post that will lead on the risk register and contingency planning.
Assistant Chief Plant Health Officer Richard McIntosh, said: ”Getting a wide range of input at this stage of the plant biosecurity strategy is invaluable, it is very important that we get this strategy right for everyone working with trees and plants.”
“We will be looking at increasing our activity on surveillance and research over the next few years in order to ensure we protect our trees and plants as much as possible and are ready to deal with any threats to them.”
MORE than half of the compost sold in the UK contains peat, say the Royal Horticultural Society .
This, they say, is harmful because it leads to further depletion of peat bogs in countries such as Ireland and the Baltic states, which supply most of our peat.
It suggests using alternatives such as coir, made from coconut shells, and green waste from household recycling.
Dr Paul Alexander from the RHS said: “We share the
environmental concerns about peat use - its value as a carbon store and the habitat damage - and we think most gardeners would prefer to grow plants without doing environmental damage.”
Peat bogs are an important environmental resource and create areas of huge biodiversity, keeping more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere than forests, and helping to prevent flooding, according to Natural England.
As a further spur to gardeners, the RHS and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is making £50,000 available to Britain in Bloom groups to buy alternatives.
Wedholme Flow 8 PC FEBRUARY/MARCH 2014
Millions of cubic metres of peat are imported into Britain each year. Peat is still produced in the UK, but in ever smaller quantities, as Government money is used to buy up the
The register will not only identify threats in a timely fashion, it will also help a range of groups, including nurseries and woodland managers, to consider and manage risk effectively.
The risk register was recommended in the Tree Health and Plant Biosecurity Taskforce Report published in May 2013. The Taskforce was set up by Environment Secretary Owen Paterson following the discovery of Chalara fraxinea (ash dieback) in the UK in 2012, to consider and address the current and possible future threats to tree health. It was made up of a group of expert scientists and chaired by Professor Chris Gilligan of Cambridge University.
The report made eight recommendations to improve plant and tree health in the UK - Government has accepted all of these recommendations.
Defra has made tree and plant health one of its top priorities and is continuing to tackle tree
mineral rights of peat producers in order to reduce the impact on Britain’s peat bogs.
Most bags of compost sold at garden centres contain up to 70% peat, even though manufacturers have been under pressure from the Government to reduce their peat content. The problem is that for gardeners, peat is good at its job.
“It’s light, it’s cheap, and it holds water very well,” says Dr Alexander. “For many gardeners it’s the answer to their problems. The problem for the industry has been finding material that covers all the bases that peat does, and that is proving a challenge.”
The quality of the alternatives is variable. They are also more expensive than peat, and studies show that for most gardeners price is a major issue.
But the RHS says alternatives are improving, and it is trying to lead the way by reducing its own peat usage to less than 1% of the compost it consumes.
The RHS is also calling on manufacturers to label their compost bags more clearly, because many are vague about peat content, making it difficult for consumers to make informed choices.
Britain has lost 95% of its peat bogs, and the struggle is now on to preserve what is left at locations such as Wedholme Flow
Lord de Mauley
pests and diseases, including Chalara, by:
- introducing tighter controls on the import of oak, ash, plane and sweet chestnut trees
- allocating £8m for research into diseases that could affect our trees
- planting 250,000 ash saplings to monitor for genetic resistance to Chalara and commissioned research to investigate genetic resistance in a laboratory setting
- investigating fourteen products as potential treatments for Chalara
The plant biosecurity strategy will now be developed, drawing on the thoughts of the attendees of the summit and other
stakeholder engagement and is due to be published later in the spring.
To see the first phase of the risk register visit the FERA website
www.fera.defra.gov.uk
in Cumbria, an area of just- surviving bog and part of a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) which was previously excavated for peat.
Alasdair Brock of Natural England, who are measuring the peat bog at Wedholme Flow said that work stopped about ten years ago, yet areas where the peat was extracted still look as black and dead as the day the machinery left. “Very little grows there without extensive restoration work. It’s an incredibly harsh environment,” he said.
“In winter, you get frost-heave whilst, in summer, it’s a bit like Melbourne - you can get temperatures of up to 40°C or 45°C on the ground. So, if you are a plant trying to get going, it doesn’t work.”
Natural England has been working to recolonise the bog at Wedholme Flow and other peat bogs by blocking up the drainage ditches dug when it was being worked, and reintroducing the sphagnum mosses and other plants that gradually build up the natural dome shape of a healthy peat bog.
It is a long-term task; the mosses grow at a rate of 1mm a year.
It took around 10,000 years to create the peat bog, following the last ice age, but only 40 years to almost destroy it.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156