Thousands of trees are being felled across South West Scotland, to tackle the spread of a disease affecting Larches. The Galloway Forest Park has the greatest number of infected trees in the UK, and won’t be free of it for another two years.
Larch Disease was first noticed in Devon and Cornwall in 2010, before spreading to Wales in 2011 and the West of Scotland in 2012, but the biggest outbreak of the disease by far has been in Galloway.
Felling in the Galloway Forest Park has been taking place continually since 2012, and since then 1,300 hectares of larch have been taken down, that’s about the equivalent of 2,000 football pitches.
