Ash Die Back and Fergie Time
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Thank you for downloading More or Less from the BBC. Here's Tim Harford.
Hello and welcome to a brand new series of More or Less, your weekly dose of numbers in the news. I'm Tim Harford, and if listening figures were votes, we'd be police and crime commissioners by now. This week we'll be felling a few tree-based statistics as we look at Ash Dieback. We'll be revisiting Trompton to check up on Dibble and asking if Manchester United do get a little extra Fergie time at the end of matches compared to other teams.
You're sitting there going, OK, there's a couple of subs, a couple of goals, that's wasted time, injury there, you know, three minutes, maybe four. You find yourself saying five. So where did that extra minute come from?
While we've been off air, a mass killer has been found stalking the land, Kalara Ash Dieback. 20 years after the first confirmed case was recorded in Eastern Europe, the disease has arrived in the British countryside. It was found in woodlands in East Anglia last month, and since then, every time I open a newspaper or switch on the television, it seems to have spread. Ash Dieback. Number of affected counties doubles.
Ash dieback beyond control.
Ash dieback. 100,000 trees fell to combat killer fungus.
Ruth Alexander has been trying to keep up with this fast-paced story. Hello, Ruth.
Hello, and it's been quite easy too, actually, because the disease isn't spreading like wildfire. We're finding more and more of it because we've started looking for it. The Forestry Commission and the Woodland Trust have had their SWAT teams out in the countryside surveying about 1,000 sites which have received saplings from nurseries where ash dieback's been found. They're also sampling 2,500 areas of countryside each, 100 square kilometres, and when they find a diseased tree, a doc goes on the map.
And each dot is a new sighting, but it's not necessarily a new infection.
Yes, the head of conservation for the Woodland Trust, Austin Brady, has told me that some of the new dots represent disease that's actually been there for up to two years.
As the dots on the map have sort of increased over the last few weeks, I think people have mistakenly assumed that that's a sign of the disease spreading rapidly. I think the reality is that it's a sign of the survey having been gradually rolled out across the country... And the more dots on the map are just helping us to build a much better snapshot of where the disease is now and are not telling us anything at all about how quickly the disease is spreading.
Am I right to understand that actually at this time of year the disease doesn't spread?
That's correct, yes. The disease is spread by small spores that come out of the fallen leaves and parts of the stems of the leaves that have fallen to the ground. And those spores only really spread between about June to September, October. So at this time of year, there are no spores actively spreading. So the sense that the disease is popping up in other places is really because people are now more vigilant, they're looking for the signs and they're putting the dots on the map to give us a snapshot of where it is today.
So we'll only begin to get an idea of how fast this disease is spreading when a second snapshot's taken.
Yes, so in about a year's time, Austin says. But they do know from continental Europe's experience that on average the disease can spread at a rate of 20 to 30 kilometres a year.
And they're worried. They've felled 100,000 trees. And Ruth, you can tell Austin, if more need to go, I'm ready to do my bit.
Tim, put it away. There's a pair of scissors here that'll do.
What is Ash dieback and how was it discovered in the UK?
If you could imagine something that looks more or less like a twig, about 18 inches long with some roots on the bottom, that's the kind of scale that we're talking about. And those kinds of saplings, the bulk of those have been destroyed.
So it might be more accurate to say 100,000 twigs have been pulled out of the ground.
That's almost going to the other end of the scale, I guess. But I guess the most accurate thing to say would be that 100,000 saplings have been destroyed in nurseries or removed from recent planting sites.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–3:21
2
What is Ash dieback and how was it discovered in the UK?
3:21–7:43
3
Why do recent maps show a rapid spread of Ash dieback — is it actually spreading faster?
7:43–18:11
4
What happened in Denmark — does '90% of ash trees affected' mean 90% will die?
18:11–26:04
5
How many UK trees could be affected and does the 30% headline add up?
26:04–27:31