This article is from page 6 of the 2012-11-13 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 6 JPG
TENS of thousands of mature ash trees will wither and possibly die in Clare in the coming years as the spread of Chalara fraxinea or ash dieback disease to Clare has been deemed inevitable.
The fungal infection, which was discovered in an area of County Galway last week, will have a particularly negative effect on sections of the Burren – where ash is a central part of the natural biodiversity.
Ash plays a key role in the Burren ecosystem and provides shelter for insects and other smaller plants. While the exact effects of the spread of ash dieback to the Burren cannot be guessed, it is thought that they will not have a very negative effect on the Burren’s rare butterfly population or its collection of alpine flowers.
“It is not only likely that it will spread to Clare, at this point it is inevitable. Nobody has been able to stop it before. The spores of the fungus are airborne and are released by the leaves, so they spread very rapidly,” said Sharon Parr of the Burren Farming for Conservation Group.
“You could try to contain it by burning all the leaves of infected trees but spores are being released before any signs of the disease are detected. So even if you cut an infected tree down you would have to gather up all the leaves produced by that tree and burn them to contain the infection. I just can’t see that happening. Nobody has been successful in containing them to date.”
The spread of this disease is likely to have a major impact on the Burren due to the large number of ash trees in existence there and to the delicate balance which already exists in the Burren ecosystem.
“This is going to be incredibly significant. Ash is one of the major woodland trees in Ireland and when this disease gets into the Burren area, and other areas of well drained ash-friendly soil, it is going to have a major impact,” continued Sharon.
“Ash is the main large tree species in the Burren. You have hazel woodland in some sections of the Burren but as you move east the ash starts to take over and become a much more dominant part of the landscape. There are significant areas of ash woodland in the Burren which could very easily be lost.
“It is thought that some of the non- native ash trees have some sort of immunity to the disease and it won’t effect mountain ash, because mountain ash isn’t really an ash species at all, it is a totally different species of tree.
“This will certainly effect the Burren and the problem at this stage is that we don’t really know how. We don’t know for sure what parts of the biodiversity up there is affected by the ash. We know that a lot of lichens are directly connected to the ash trees and a lot of insects and flowers are able to grow and thrive under an ash canopy, but it is not clear.
“I think the biggest loss will be the visual loss of the ash tree themselves first and then we will just have to wait and see how that affects other parts of the Burren. I don’t see it having a major impact on the rare flowers or butterflies yet – they are more associated with the grassland than woodland parts of the Burren and there should be enough pollinators to keep that going at this stage.
“But there are other species which are directly tied into the ash plants that will suffer. We will just have to wait and see.”
Between 60 and 90 per cent of the ash trees in Denmark are effected by the disease while in Sweden more than 50 per cent of the trees have noticeable damage.