I’ve been getting to know an ash tree. She’s a veteran, pushing a century. A melding has happened and she is in the embrace of a hawthorn. Both are swathed in ivy so two sets of branches grow from what looks like the same tree. As the ash dies from the outside, the hawthorn is pushing vibrant new life out to the light.
Millions of ash trees are dying across the country, winter gaunt in all the summer green. An invasive fungus is responsible for the treepocalypse. Spores blow on the wind. Dieback takes more of the branches each season, death coming from the outside in. Each summer the problem is becoming more stark.
Ash is a keystone species. Viking mythology puts it at the heart of human existence. Almost 1,000 species call it home: birds, mammals, fungi, invertebrates and lichens.
Our hedgerows have succession in hand. Left alone exuberant elders, hawthorns, brambles, willows, blackthorn and dogroses will swallow the space left by the ash trees. And the best biodiversity approach is to leave the ghost trees in place, scientists say. It’s also the best carbon solution. Felling and burning them will release the carbon they have stored.
Using their timber for beautiful things – furniture-making, countertops, hurleys – can keep that carbon locked up and create training opportunities and fulfilling work. Maybe we could make tables from ash killed by dieback around which people can gather to come up with a plan to prevent future keystone losses and the extinction cascade that they can cause.
Nature doesn’t do monocultures, and ash dieback is a landscape-scale lesson in the resilience of naturally generated woodland. Monoculture plantation ashes didn’t stand a chance when the spores blew in, infecting every tree. In a dead plantation, the close-planted trees knock together with a strange hollow sound, like boat masts or bones.
Nature does forest creation better than us. Protecting areas where trees can naturally regenerate themselves will be the cheapest way to begin to regenerate our native woodlands. There is also a huge need for foresters and farmers to work together to plant and establish new native woodlands. But farmers need payments to protect existing woodland and allow emerging forests to emerge. The hope is that this will be policy in the new forestry programme due later this summer.
Andrew St Leger of the Woodlands League has long been championing native woodlands and their value to communities. His latest project is a campaign to protect what they call the Great Forest of Aughty, to connect patches of woodland along rivers and streams across Clare and Galway to create wildlife corridors. You can sign his petition on his site www.woodlandleague.org.
Catherine Cleary is co-founder of Pocket Forests
