Ash dieback will be costly to the environment and the economy David Mark / Alamy Stock Photo
The death of virtually all Britain’s ash trees due to a fungal disease will cost more than just lost habitats for wildlife and treasured woods for recreation. A new estimate of the economic cost of ash dieback, a fungal disease that arrived in the UK in 2012, puts the price tag at £14.8 billion.
That’s about three times as much as estimates for the Dutch elm disease crisis in the 1960s and 70s, largely because there are far more ash trees. It…
