'Ash dieback and insects could ravage our forests but they will rise again' - The Guardian

I am the president of the Woodland Trust. Perhaps I should resign.

If you go down to the woods today, you are in for a nasty surprise. Well, not a surprise exactly, as you are probably aware that these are desperate times for our woodlands, in particular for ash trees – until now one of the most common in Britain – almost all of which are doomed to die in the next few years Who or what is to blame for this disaster?

Well, we now know what. Ash dieback disease is caused by a fungus, Chalara fraxinea, which slowly but surely has been spreading across continental Europe, turning ashes to ashes, for the last 10 years.

Slowly but unsurely, the British government introduced a ban on the importing of ash trees at the end of October, when it was evident that imported trees had brought the fungus into the country in early March. Sportingly, this gave it a summer season to settle into Britain before this route was blocked. This begged the question why we were importing trees native to Britain in the first place. Ash germinates and grows as readily and quickly as any common or garden weed. But evidently it made business sense to take native ash seeds or seedlings overseas to be raised in commercial nurseries and to be brought back into the country as saplings.

And it turns out we in the Woodland Trust were collaborating in this return of the native trees without realising it. With hindsight it is obvious we should have checked to see where every one of the thousands of trees we plant every year was coming from, making sure the route they were taking did not expose them to risk of infection on the way. Some ecological purists have always argued you should only plant trees from strictly local sources. Their arguments appear even stronger today.

An even purer way to produce a woodland or a forest is to just fence off the relevant area of land and let nature take its course. It can take a while for trees to force their way through grasses, low-growing plants and scrub, but they will get there in the end.

Realistically, if we are to meet our aim of doubling Britain's tree cover, or just to see the establishment of some attractive new woods, we have to give nature a helping hand and plant trees ourselves. And it looks as though ash dieback would have got here anyway, the spores of the fungus carried on the wind to East Anglia and beyond. Many of the sites where the fungus has been detected have no connection with imported trees.

So while banning imports from areas affected by ash tree disease is obviously sensible, it may have made little difference in the long term. Keeping dieback at Channel's length, like rabies, was almost certainly beyond us. At best it may have left us with a population of trees at risk from blow-in infection from Europe, forever on the brink of a disaster waiting to happen.

Should the Woodland Trust have been making more forceful warnings of the threat to our woods posed by ash dieback? Perhaps, but there are dozens of threats to our woodlands which the Woodland Trust and other interested organisations should have been, and have been, talking about for years.

During the party conference season, I chaired a discussion on the issues raised by the Independent Panel on Forestry, set up after the government changed its mind about selling off its forestry estate. The panel itself had been chaired by the Bishop of Liverpool and his report has been well received on all sides (the government is due to give its response in January). The mood of our discussion was optimistic with plenty of enthusiasm about the way forward for public and private forestry.

Nevertheless we had to acknowledge that there were many diseases posing real and present danger to a whole range of our native, common and commercially important trees. Top of the list was ash dieback. But there were many others.

Oak trees are currently threatened by acute oak decline, the oak processionary moth and the oak pinhole borer; for several years horse chestnuts have been visibly suffering from bleeding chestnut canker; Scots pines are being damaged by red band needle blight and the pine tree lappet moth. Threats are also posed by the Asian longhorn beetle and any number of other exotic insects, bacteria, fungi and pathogens seemingly waging relentless war on spruce, larch, juniper and virtually every other tree, shrub and bush you can think of. Even the London plane, the robust hybrid which for so long has proved adept at coping with the stresses of our polluted city, is suffering from a new disease, massaria, which weakens boughs and branches to the consternation of local authority safety officers. And, for plane trees, news from France is even worse. Ceratocystis platani is killing the shade trees of the Canal du Midi and sooner or later it is likely to make its way here.

In fact, we tree-huggers are probably seen as crying not just wolf, but screaming about a whole pack of them. Just mentioning the problems caused by climate change and human trade and transport can cause eyes to glaze over quicker than an oak processionary moth can form a conga line.

The Woodland Trust was set up 40 years ago by the individual effort of Kenneth Watkins, who was concerned by the loss of woods and hedgerows near him in Devon. Appropriately enough the little acorn he planted has grown into the great oak of the Woodland Trust today.

Forty years ago the woodlands were recovering from the effects of Dutch elm disease, which brought down almost every English elm tree. Ash trees, 90% of which have been destroyed in Denmark, are doing only a little better. But if 10% are immune to this fungus, resistant strains can survive and in due course replace the many others that die.

Great stands of ash trees will be lost today, but they can grow back tomorrow. Anyone who plants trees knows they are really creating something for the future, not the present. Working to save ancient forests from destruction, whether from an invasive fungus or insensitive planning, is very much part of the Woodland Trust's activities, but so too is planting for generations to come.

I only have an honorary position with the Woodland Trust, and I won't call for my own resignation. In fact, in this time of crisis for our woods everyone connected with the trust or who has any interest in woods and woodlands should redouble their efforts on behalf of our trees. In the long run, our trees will long outlive us – touch wood.