Killer tree blight alert for Irish forest owners

THE forestry industry is on high alert after a killer tree blight was found on a Sitka spruce, the predominant species in Irish plantations.

Already, the forest service in Britain has felled 5,000 acres of trees in an effort to halt the rapid spread of Phytophthora ramorum, since the August 2009 finding of the disease in Japanese larch throughout Britain and in Northern Ireland — the first time it had been found infecting a commercially important conifer anywhere in the world.

Previously, a different strain of Phytophthora ramorum had killed millions of North American oaks, giving rise to its common name of “sudden oak death”. Native oaks have been little affected in Britain and Ireland, where the term “Ramorum disease” is preferred.