Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust have began a series of preventative felling measures on trees infected with “ash dieback”. The work, which started last week, is currently taking place at two of the trust’s sites – Ploughman Wood and Dukes Wood – in order to protect people and property from falling trees.
Ash dieback is a progressive fungal disease, which is incurable and only affects ash trees. The infected ash trees ultimately die which leads to them becoming weak and unstable.
The trust, which is responsible for 40 sites, is undertaking “selective felling” of particularly dangerous trees rather than cutting down swathes of woodland. Head of communications at Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust Erin McDaid described that work as a “balanced approach” and said it was necessary to keep the woodlands open and to avoid cutting down “swathes of trees”.
“Safety is an absolute imperative for us,” he said. “We have been trying to find a balance whereby we can keep people and property safe and protected, whilst also ensuring there is adequate habitat for nature. Also, we are working to try and keep our nature reserves and woodlands open for visitors.”
A consequence of the works is that certain “informal paths” have been closed but all public rights of way at the sites remain open. The reason for certain path closures is the amount of trees that would need to be felled to keep the routes safe to the public would be “devastating” to the woodland. The trust’s aim is to cut down as few trees as possible as even dead ash trees can provide habitats for animals.
Ploughman Wood
(Image: Hattie Lavender)
The decision to be selective with the felling will also save the trust “thousands of pounds” every year compared to the cost of cutting down lots of trees, although it will still be a “significant” outlay for the organisation.
McDaid spoke about how the public could play their part during the work. He said: “We’re looking for cooperation from our visitors and understanding that the reason we need to close off some of the informal pathways is so that we don’t have to cut huge swathes of additional ash trees back as a preventative measure.
“The focus now is on making sure the trees that are affected are safe and what we want to do is to retain as many of the ash trees as possible because the disease itself doesn’t pose a threat to public health or to other types of tree either.
“Our ideal scenario is to leave those trees that don’t cause a direct threat to people or property but to fulfil that plan, we do need cooperation and understanding from our visitors. It will mean some restrictions on access to parts of our woodland but the alternative would be to remove huge numbers of trees, or to close some of our woodlands on safety grounds – something we don’t want to do.”
The trees being felled have been identified though a combination of detailed survey work and inspections. The specific areas being targeted within the respective woodlands are rights of way and boundaries with roads.
Over the next couple of weeks, McDaid explained similar work would take place at other woodland sites, dependant on weather and ground conditions, which would be announced in due course. The work is expected to be an ongoing project set to take place for the next few years during the winter months to combat the impact of ash dieback.